LITMIR.BIZ

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his cheek against hers, a sandpaper tenderness that made her breath hitch.

      “Dixie,” he breathed against her cheek. Just that. Just her name. For a moment they lay tight and close in the damp and the darkness, unmoving. Holding on to each other.

      But her body’s urgency wouldn’t be denied. Her hips lifted, rolled against him. He responded by raising up to gather the skirt of her dress with one hand, then slid his hand between her legs. She jolted at the first touch.

      “Now?” he asked. “Now, Dixie?”

      “Yes.” She pushed up with her feet, lifting her hips, and he yanked down her panties and tossed them away. When she reached for the zipper on his slacks, his hand was already there. Together they freed him. Then he was cupping her bottom with his hands and pushing inside.

      The heat and length of him were perfect. But it had been a long time for her, long enough for the muscles to be tight, resistant. She moaned with frustration, in no mood for slow and easy, and thrust up hard. And he filled her.

      He gasped out something, but the words were lost in the storms, inner and outer. Slowly he withdrew, and just as slowly returned. Her world narrowed to now—to this moment when the ground was soft and chill against her back, and the rain fell in a liquid rush on leaves, on earth and puddles, as Cole slid slowly back inside her.

      She gripped his hips and held him there, held him tight against her, wanting to hold on to the moment. To somehow stop time and stay here, like this, with him.

      But time and their bodies defeated her. The moment slipped away in a flood of urgency as he began to move—faster, harder, smacking himself into her with thrusts that shoved her into the ground, winding her tighter and tighter until she cried out, her nails digging into arms rigid with tension, her body bucking. She heard him call out as her mind spiraled off into a place where now was white and endless.

      Slowly her thoughts reassembled. There was a stone digging into her left buttock. Cole lay on top of her, his chest heaving. He was heavy. Her skirt was up around her waist. She was wet, muddy and cold.

      And smiling. A few seconds later, she was giggling.

      He groaned and propped himself up on his elbows, frowning down at her. “What?”

      In answer, she dug her fingers into a particularly squelchy spot of mud on her right side and painted a big stripe down his nose.

      He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Then he snorted—and then he rolled off her onto the cold, wet ground, laughing. “I can’t believe I…we…”

      “In the mud!” Giggles wound up into laughter. “Both of us, in the mud!”

      “Oh, yeah.” He was laughing hard now, holding his stomach. “Such romance, such…I swept you off your feet, didn’t I?”

      “Right off them, and plopped me down in the mud.” She began to sing “Some Enchanted Evening” seriously off-key, the words interrupted by giggles.

      Cole hummed along, propped up on one elbow, then bent over and kissed her. “I guess this proves I can get down and dirty.”

      That sent her off into renewed laughter, more than the small joke warranted. But she felt so good.

      “Come on, my muddy partner in lust.” He rolled to his feet, zipped his pants and held out a hand. “Let’s get you inside and warmed up.”

      “My panties,” she said, taking his hand and letting him pull her up. “And my shoe,” she added when she noticed she was lopsided.

      Fortunately, the shoe wasn’t far. Cole presented it to her with a bow. But it was almost completely dark now, though the rain had slowed to a drizzle. “I’m afraid the panties are lost in action,” he said.

      “We have to find them,” she insisted, slipping the wet shoe back on. Yuck. It was cold. “Or someone else will.”

      “No one will know who they belonged to.”

      “Oh, now I feel better.” But when she looked around she knew he was right. She’d never find them in the dark. She slid an arm around his waist, he put his arm around her shoulders, and they started back. “I’m going to have to buy Merry a new raincoat. This one’s ruined.”

      “You’re wearing my sister’s coat?” he asked, appalled. “I made love to you on my sister’s coat?”

      She started giggling again.

      They made it to the carriage house unobserved—or so she hoped. Surely no one else was idiotic enough to be out at night in this weather. There they left a trail of clothes on their way to the bathroom, where a warm shower chased away the goose bumps.

      Steam, proximity and soap-slick skin had an inevitable effect. But this time they could linger over kisses, touch lightly here, tease a little there. She rediscovered the sensitive spot on his throat, and he remembered the place at the end of her spine where a light stroking made her crazy.

      Not that he would indulge her, not until they were both dry and horizontal on a clean, warm bed. She had to admit he had a point—but she also had to pay him back for making her wait.

      She knew just how to do that. With hands and lips and tongue she explained payback to him, and she showed no mercy.

      Neither did he.

      Dixie’s bedroom was in the loft, and she’d left the curtains open. By the time she lay lax and limp with sweat cooling on her skin, the sky had cleared. The room was awash in moonlight. The only sound was the quiet tick-tick-tick of her windup travel clock…and, from downstairs, a faint crunching as Hulk helped himself to a late-night snack.

      Hulk…deserted by someone, claimed by her. Just as Cole had rescued an abandoned Tilly.

      We’re so alike in some ways, so different in others, she thought, snuggling her head a little more cozily into his shoulder. His eyes were closed, but the half smile on his lips said he wasn’t sleeping. Just drifting.

      She ran her fingers over his chest, loving his skin, his ribs, the small patch of hair right over his heart. Marveling at the fact that she was lying in Cole’s arms once more…and in love once more.

      Or still? Who could say? she thought drowsily, her eyelids heavy. Life sure was strange.

      Maybe there had been a little seed, deep in her heart, left behind by the time when she’d loved him before. A seed that had sprouted the day she saw him again, and flourished…nourished in part, she admitted, by lust. Not much doubt that the seed had burst into full, unmistakable bloom when they rolled around in the mud together.

      Partners in lust, she thought, and smiled. She and Cole hadn’t truly been friends before. They’d been too young—afraid of being hurt, maybe, but also afraid of being fools. Afraid to trust. They’d loved, but with one foot out the door, ready for the moment when the other failed them.

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