Page 81 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
“Stay,” she whispered. His palms gripped her waist, heat searing through silk and thin cotton.
“You sure that’s what you want?”
She could say no. Shake her head. Tell him she was scared. But the truth was, she wasn’t afraid of Cal making love to her. She was timid about something else.
“If I can…keep my nightgown on?”
She cringed at the sound of her request, but she wouldn’t take it back. Cal’s brows tensed together.
“You don’t want me to see you?”
A hot flush creeped up her neck when she recalled that Cal had seen the weals on her left arm and shoulder the first night they’d met. But she also had several ridges of scar tissue along her breast, and her left hip and thigh that he wouldn’t have seen. Cal was used to her face; these other scars would be new to his gaze. If he found them unattractive…Fern didn’t know if she could withstand the humiliation of it.
But as his eyes stayed level with hers, she let the tension out of her back and neck. She knew that she’d worried for nothing, even before he spoke.
“You can have it on or off. It’s your choice, but Fern—” His fingertips pressed harder against her waist, holding her tighter. “There’s no part of you I’m not gonna love.”
The words hung, suspended in the space between them, for as long as it took for her to breathe again. Cal loved her. She kissed him. Fern had never felt more needed or wanted than when he stood up, clutching her in his arms and carrying her to the little storeroom. Cal closed the door, and she only had to say one more thing: “Off.”
23
The shine of the streetlamp coming through the storeroom window gave them just enough light to see by. As Cal pushed the silk robe from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, then lifted the hem of her nightgown to her hips, Fern half-wished for total darkness. However, after he’d pulled the nightgown over her head and tossed it aside, she was glad for the dim light. Without it, she would not have seen the heated desire in his eyes as they roved over her. She’d never believed any man would ever look at her in such a way. Fern knew in that moment she would not forget it. She would relive it again and again until the day she died.
Cal shrugged off his shoulder holster and laid it carefully on a pantry shelf. He devoured her with his eyes as he gripped her waist with one hand and scrabbled to free the buttons on his shirt with his other. Fern tried to help make quicker work of it, but in their rush, their tangling fingers tore the thread securing a few buttons. Theyplinked off the floor before he finally shed his shirt fully. Cal released her for a half breath, long enough to yank his cotton undershirt over his head, and then he brought her against him again. The collision of their naked skin, of her breasts rasping against the dusting of coarse dark hair on his chest, exploded through her like stars shooting across the night sky.
His kisses pushed harder as he shed his pants and kicked them aside. Fern gasped at the heat of his skin and the hard ridges of his body wrapping around her.
The light, dizzying sensation of his touch, his mouth, and his desire prodding her soft belly blinded her even as he murmured against her lips, “You’ve gotta be kidding me with this cot.”
Fern laughed until he captured her lips again. The cot was far too small for them to fit comfortably together. Smaller even than the bed at Hazel’s roadside motel. Still, Cal eased her down onto the thin mattress, the springs complaining as he lowered himself next. Braced on his elbows, he guided her and positioned them both with slow, tender movements. As frenzied as he’d been to undress, he now moved languidly, taking time to explore her body with his mouth and tongue and hands, until she thought she might burn up.
“Cal,” she pleaded, gulping a breath as once again, his teeth nipped her throat.
“There’ll be pain,” he whispered. “Only for a few seconds.”
Fern nodded. She wanted him too much to worry about pain. The promised sting came, and Cal’s mouth lowered over hers to swallow her gasp. The smartingebbed, as promised, and soon, blissful pressure and friction overwhelmed her. Fern couldn’t breathe, and she didn’t care to, so long as Cal stayed a part of her forever.
His heartbeat slowed. It thrummed between Fern’s shoulder blades, which were pressed up against Cal’s bare chest. The two of them barely fit on the army surplus cot on their sides, lengthwise, but they weren’t ready to move yet. For it to end. Her head rested on his arm, his other arm thrown over her hip, holding her close—either because he wanted to feel his skin against hers, or to keep her from slipping straight over the edge of the cot. Fern laughed at that image, and Cal, nuzzling her neck, pulled back.
“What’s so funny?” He gently clamped his teeth around her earlobe, and Fern quivered.
“This cot,” she said. He slid his warm leg over hers, and the springs under the mattress squealed. They’d tried to be quiet while making love, but Fern was afraid they hadn’t been successful.
“It’s not all that romantic, is it?”
She laughed quietly again. “It’s perfect.” She pressed her lips against his biceps.
He wanted to say something, and she thought she knew what it might be. After a few more minutes of reveling in the feel of him, Fern grimaced. “You have to go, don’t you?”
He exhaled, his breath gusting against her neck. “Not yet.”
She twisted her shoulders around as far as the cot would allow, though she couldn’t see him well. The small, high window only let a shaft of light into the storeroom. It fell on a few shelves of dried beans, condensed milk, and Spam. Fern had suspected something since he’d arrived an hour or so ago.
“Rod doesn’t know I’m here, does he?”
Cal’s chest expanded against her body, then released. “No.”
“What have you told him?”
