20. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

H is feet wouldn't budge beyond the foot of the attic stairs. They were rooted to the glossy wood planks. A few doors down, occasional thumps announced that his brother's family was settling down to sleep.

Ben's warning thrummed like an insistent headache, and Junior massaged his forehead with a callused palm.

A creak from the staircase above alerted him, and he hastily dropped his hand.

"What are you doing?" Isa whispered. Her fine lawn nightgown was just visible in the dark stairway, white and billowing around her bare feet. It was a far cry from the old maid wrapper she'd slept in while traveling.

"Ben and Lucy suspect something," he answered softly, glancing down the family hallway at the other doors. He half expected Ben to be standing in an open doorway, staring in accusation. But every door was closed. Everything was quiet.

"But they aren't certain?" she asked, closing the distance between them. She stopped on the last step, just tall enough to meet him eye to eye.

"No. But they're suspicious."

"Without evidence, there is no argument." Isa's hands lifted to Junior's hair and smoothed it back, nails raking his scalp. It made his eyes close, and his body shudder. Her soft body pressed against him. Long, sinuous arms wrapped around his neck. "Take me upstairs."

She smelled powdery and feminine with a hint of wildness. Her hair was down, cloaking her back, and the ends tickled his forearms when he gripped her bottom to pick her up. The time for indecision was gone. Her legs wrapped tight around his lean hips, and he began the careful journey upstairs, swathed by her body. Enveloped in her scent.

Isa trailed her lips from his ear to his jawline. His ability to think vanished.

The attic space was long and narrow, with a single, circular window at one end. A strip of dim streetlamp light stretched across the floor to the stair railing, and his feet followed it. Junior dipped his head to capture lips like pliant satin. His knees hit the narrow little bed against the wall, and he stood her on its firm mattress. Bent to avoid the attic's sharply vaulted ceiling, Isa watched his hands slide from her hips to the hem of her nightgown, disappearing beneath.

Neither spoke.

She reached up and untied the ribbon at her neckline; the nightgown opened, drooping down her shoulders. Junior stifled a groan and pulled the garment over her head. Her yards of gilded hair fell over her shoulders, scarcely disguising how gloriously naked she was before him. Although he knew Isa was an equestrian and sportswoman, her physical strength caught him unawares. Junior couldn't stop touching her. His hands mapped out the areas between her full breasts and the flare of her hips. Burying his face in the silky seam above her navel, he brought her close, breathing her in.

Slowly, she unknotted his kerchief until it drifted to the bed below.

He allowed her to touch him, to unbutton his vest. His shirt. Suspenders were unclasped and dangled to his knees. He shrugged everything off and went still as her cool hands familiarized themselves with his body. Breathing hard, he watched her get to her knees to press a kiss to his healed bullet wound. Biting his lip, he ran his fingers through her hair, noting its wavy thickness, wild and untamed as a mustang's mane. When her fingers busily worked at his belt and fly, he fisted the hair in his hands and pulled her head back. Her neck arched delicately.

"What are you doing?" His question was almost inaudible.

"Kissing you," Isa breathed, placing her hand directly over the bulge straining behind his fly. "Here."

It didn't shock him that she knew of such things. She was the nosiest busybody he'd ever met. As a child, she'd ask the most inappropriate questions after hours of eavesdropping on her brothers, the cowhands, and teenage boys at church. If any innocent knew about kissing a man below the belt, it was her. Junior wanted to ask if she'd ever done such a thing before. Another part of him never wanted to know. If he asked uncomfortable questions, she would ask them in return. The notion was enough to make him sweat. Hell, he was sweating now. His heart thumped like a herd of buffalo against his sternum. Sudden possessiveness made it hard to release her, to allow her clever fingers to complete their task. He couldn't stop touching Isa's hair. Her neck. Her delicate jaw.

Once Junior's pants were pulled down, his cock sprang out, thick and heavy with arousal. It pointed right at her. For a breathless moment, he experienced an adolescent fear that she would laugh at him. She didn't. Her wide-set eyes were enormous, and she touched him lightly, running a fingertip along the sensitive head to the thin skin behind its flared crown. Then, eyes closing, she leaned forward and kissed it. He couldn't look away. The image of her—knees slightly spread on the quilt, back arched, his tanned hands holding her dark-blonde hair from her face—would be burned like a brand behind his eyes. The kiss deepened; her lips spread. Wet warmth enveloped him, long lashes fluttering against her cheekbones. He tilted his head back, eyes closed, his throat swallowing something hard that had lodged in it.

Isa began to move, her mouth gliding slowly upon him, then away. Unable to resist, he looked down again. Their eyes met. Fingers trembling, he carefully guided her mouth from him. A hint of a frown shadowed her brow before her lips were crushed beneath his. He kissed her ravenously, pausing only to step out of his boots and rip off his remaining clothes.

They were naked together, hot skin pressing against heavy breasts, his chest hair tickling. He tumbled her onto the thickly padded bed.

Their mouths learned each other: soft kisses and hard, gentle plucks and deep pulls. Junior had never felt so eager to merely kiss. If it was all they did tonight, he'd be content. But his body felt the response in hers, the way her movements shifted from languid to urgent. Demanding.

Hard as iron against her, he broke away from her lips, gasping for air against her neck. Tension strummed his muscles like bass strings. His limbs trembled.

"Touch me," she demanded, moving insistently against him.

Junior wedged his body between her thighs, then slid down to breathe in the satiny area between her slightly flattened breasts. With his hands, he pressed her breasts together, kissing each on its peak, tracing each nipple with his tongue until they were hard and wet. Isa's fingers were rough in his hair, and he grinned around her breast. Taking the hint, he laved a nipple with the flat of his tongue and sucked it in deep. Her exhalation was fast and shaky, her grip on his hair fierce. Junior showed both breasts equal treatment, then moved down, down. Her breath stuttered. His pulse pounded so fiercely in his ears that it was a wonder he heard her at all. Gripping her beneath her slightly damp knees, he pushed her legs up and apart.

Isa squeaked, and her hands left his hair to grasp at the quilt.

"Sh." He planted a soothing kiss on the area above her pubic hair.

The room was bright enough that he could see her outlined against the coverlet. She was beautiful, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Lying flat on the mattress, he allowed his eyes to drift closed and did what he'd been dreaming of since their first kiss; he kissed the incredible softness between her thighs. Junior had only done it once before, a disappointing experience. As an adolescent who spent most of his weekend nights at cathouses, he'd tumbled a good amount of women who loved to tease him for never burying his face between their legs. But he knew of the vinegar douches the more responsible whores availed themselves to, could smell the chemical tang in the air during a romp. It made him skittish.

Isa did not smell of chemicals. Her scent was clean. Sweet. It made him want to burrow, to fill her with himself until she was no longer one, but two. Him and her. His lips pressed harder, lower, against the supple crease between her thigh and sex.

From the sound of the soft moan escaping Isa's lips, she knew exactly what he was planning. Her eyes gleamed at him from the headboard, her lower lip pulled between her endearingly gapped teeth. She was waiting, breath held, curiosity and excitement alive in her expression. At any other time, he would have grinned. But not now. He was aflame. Shaking, weak, dying inside to do depraved things to her that he'd never done to another woman. Closing his eyes again, he lowered his mouth and traced the seam of her with his tongue. She jumped.

"Tickle?" Junior whispered.

"Like you took a feather down there with you," Isa whispered back.

Chuckling softly, he asked, "What if I did this instead?" And he bit her on top of her fuzzy mound. It was just like biting into a ripe peach.

Her hand swatted his head. He ducked in self-preservation, but her thighs were quicker, closing in on his ears with a muffled clap.

"Am I going to have to train you like my horse?" Amusement and affront strained the words.

"Have mercy!" He shook with mirth, ears ringing, overcome with soundless hilarity.

Isa had had enough. She rose to her knees and tried to shove him into the blankets.

Junior was ready for her. Smiling broadly, he got to his knees and, in a flash, wrestled her back down. Limbs wrapped around each other, muscles straining and defiant. He clapped a hand over her mouth and began tickling her. Her writhing was in earnest now. Breath erratic, eyes tearing up, Isa twisted and turned to get away from his tormenting fingers. Her ribcage and hip bones were the areas he targeted most, and soon, they were both sweating, gasping for air, giggling silently while trying to gain the upper hand.

Finally, he had her pinned and shoved tightly against both the wall and mattress. The play had stimulated him further; his erection had swelled to an unbearable degree.

"Give in," he breathed against her lips, nibbling on the lower one.

"You." She wrapped her fingers around his cock.

Smile dropping off, Junior watched from beneath lowered lids as her face settled into a sort of glazed triumph while she worked him with her hand. He bent and kissed her forehead. Her cheek. Her chin. Everything that made her so dear to him. He slipped his tongue between her lips, tracing the gap in her teeth.

Close to exploding, he grabbed her wrist with a steely grip. Isa didn't release him. The silence was louder than before. Their earlier amusement evaporated as he cupped her between her slightly spread legs. He heard her swallow. Heard his own heartbeat in his ears.

Isa's hand moved. It guided him down. Down. To the place he was testing with careful fingers. She was slick; he searched, found, and dipped two fingers inside her to the first knuckle. The hips beneath his flinched at the invasion, inner muscles protesting. And still, her hand guided. Junior released her wrist, removed his other hand from her body, and allowed her to line them up. Sliding a palm up her thigh to her back, he shifted her away from the wall to the center of the bed. The head of his erection notched against her. The heat radiating from her was intense, and he couldn't resist flexing his hips.

There was significant resistance despite how ready she was.

For a long, tense moment, he looked at her. They said nothing. All those years of college as a modern woman, all the beaus, her gentleman friend—she still remained untried. It stalled him. Isa was born to experience, to unveil every secret, to discover things people try their damnedest to conceal. He'd always thought she'd treat sex as just another challenge to overcome. Yet, somehow, some way, she lay beneath him, frozen and braced as though…

"Izzy?" he asked softly.

Her lips compressed stubbornly. She brought him closer until his sensitive crown pushed in an inch. Junior groaned softly.

Dropping his forehead to hers, he shook his head. "We can't." It's wrong.

"Yes. We can." Don't stop.

He pulled out, jaw clenched at the sensation. She wrapped her legs tight around his hips until he was once again notched against her. A saint couldn't resist this woman , he thought, panicking. "We shouldn't."

"Just a little bit," she urged. Almost a plea. "Just one more time."

Yes. Just a little bit. Just one more time.

He pushed forward again, and this time, with less resistance. He went in deeper. They both gasped.

Isa's hand touched his cheek, and he looked into her eyes from an inch away. "It was always meant to be you."

Gooseflesh rippled over his back, vulnerable in its nakedness. It was as though she'd spoken an oath, one as familiar as prayer. Something invoked so often it became truth. Beneath him, she undulated, her hips rising like a sea swell. Her long, long legs tightened around his hips, and her lips rose to meet his. Tempting. Persuading.

I am not a good man.

Junior kissed her deeply, lost in her, and carefully thrust to the hilt.

ISA FELT INEXORABLE pressure, insistent and unavoidable. She had always wanted to examine, to gauge, the exact force of pressure it took to penetrate one's hymen. Inconceivably, now that she was experiencing it, her focus was too clouded with arousal to contemplate the drier details of the sexual act.

What her brain centered on was the lithe, strong weight pinning her. Junior was built like a mountain lion, with bulging arms and muscular shoulders tapering to the lean hips her thighs cradled. He was kissing the sense out of her, and the discomfort below warred with mounting excitement. The pain of losing her virginity couldn't compete with her mind's intoxication, made drunk by his lips, tongue, and the clever fingers bracketing where their bodies met to stroke the top of her sex. There was a word for such a body part. A scientific one she had memorized. It escaped her now.

When he was fully seated, skin to skin, she gasped, all coherent thought muted.

Incredible fullness, heat, the instinct to move.

Junior began to rock slowly, carefully, and she couldn't catch her breath at all. He penetrated her body the way he did her mind. She had never been more present in her flesh, aware of every brush of skin. The movement of damp, sleek muscles bracketing his spine, the way his hand found her hair and tightened into a fist. Their bodies grew slick, their pace quickened, and limbs became vises as lissome movement roughened. Isa was climbing, reaching, straining for the moment that would explode her into a thousand blistering fragments.

He groaned, cursed, and suddenly, his heavy weight was gone. Withdrawing quickly from her body, he sat back on his heels. Between them, one fist held his glistening erection, and his other hand protectively cupped its head. Something warm and viscous dropped to her thigh. Isa touched it, testing its lubricity between her forefinger and thumb. She was throbbing, exposed to the air, a few touches away from climax.

"Junior," she whispered, brows knitted, the soles of her feet moving restlessly on the mussed quilt.

Eyes still glazed, Junior snagged her nightgown from the floor, roughly wiped his hand upon it, and lowered to a prostrate position between her legs. "I'll help you, darlin'," he said against her inner thigh, brushing his mouth down to the swollen, aching center of her. "I'll take care of you."

The touch of his soft tongue was like the first surge of electricity she'd experienced in her science class, a small shock followed by increasingly stronger currents. Her lips parted, a silent scream that she cruelly quashed. Biting her lips hard, she grabbed his head, needing him closer, closer. God, she couldn't think. She couldn't breathe . The sensitive tissues he worked with his surprisingly wily, indomitable tongue made her race to her peak faster, faster, until she was crashing headlong like a wave against a surf, or a coal popping in a fire, showering the sky with sparks.

When awareness returned—which it did with slumberous leisure—it was to discover his hand on her mouth, his breath gusting into her ear. Blindly she tugged his hand from her face, and it rested with proprietary ease on her breast. He was doing something strange against her shoulder; his chin bumped her collarbone repeatedly.

"What are you doing?" She was hardly conscious. Barely curious. Her brain was lethargic, like a cat that had awakened from its nap with every intention of stretching and falling back to sleep.

Junior lifted his head, eyes glittering. His face was a damp mess. "Seeing if my jaw still worked." He opened his mouth, stretching his jaw from side to side as though he'd been hit with a hard fist.

For a moment, she could only gape at him, and then she began to shake. His own shoulders moved, his dimples deep in his cheeks, the cleft in his chin more defined. She planted a kiss on the latter, and he stopped laughing.

"I'm relieved it still works," she announced, raising her arms and extending her legs, stretching her entire body in naked bliss.

"Yeah?" He didn't move off her, and his hand lovingly caressed her breast. She did not protest.

"Yes."

"That's downright generous of you."

"It's for selfish reasons, I assure you." Her mouth widened in a smile.

"Why's that?" He touched a gentle fingertip to her front teeth.

With her lips moving around the digit, she said, "Because I'd like for you to do that again."

JUNIOR HELD HER tightly against him as they settled down to sleep, and when she woke up the next morning, groggy, sore, and disoriented, his arms and legs were still heavy upon her. Like at the campsite, she rolled over to discover him sleeping with that same childlike abandon. Relaxed, his face was angelic.

Then eyes the deep blue of an arctic glacier opened in panic.

Morning sunlight streamed across the attic floorboards, and voices echoed in the hall below the stairs.

They both scurried from beneath the covers, completely naked.

Isa threw his clothes at him while he struggled to get his trousers right side out.

"Isa? Are you awake? Come join us for breakfast." Lucy called from the foot of the stairs.

Frozen in terror, Isa noticed several things at once. Junior would not get dressed in time; he was hopping on one foot to get his leg into his dark trousers. The motion did interesting things to his genitals. On the floor was her nightgown, but Isa couldn't don it; she merely held it out in horror. It had stiffened into a wrinkled ball from Junior's seed. Traces of blood stained it.

She and Junior goggled at each other, their eyes giant blue and gold saucers, respectively, in their faces.

"Isa?" Lucy sounded curious. Any minute now, and she'd be walking up the attic stairs.

Silently, Isa motioned for Junior to hide behind the changing divider, then threw the stiff nightgown at his departing buttocks. She had just enough time to kick his boots beneath her bed when the stairs creaked.

"Don't come up," Isa yelped, diving beneath the covers.

"Why not?" Lucy sounded flummoxed. The top of her head was just visible through the stair railings.

"Because I'm in my birthday suit," Isa blurted, incapable of thinking of another reason why Lucy couldn't come into the attic.

"Oh." The silence stretched.

"There are many benefits to sleeping in the nude if you must know," Isa babbled defensively from beneath the covers.

"Are there?"

She couldn't tell if Lucy sounded suspicious or intrigued.

"Oh, yes. The air flow is much better for your skin. I sleep so hot, you know. Additionally, you won't need to wash as many nightgowns. I hate the blasted things, always choking me in my sleep."

Junior, tucked deeply into the corner behind the divider, covered his face with a hand. She could spy gooseflesh on his chest and arms from the bed. His nipples had tightened into little points from the morning chill in the air.

"Well, in that case, shall I just meet you in the diner?" There was a trace of amusement in her voice but, thankfully, no suspicion.

"I'll be quick!" Isa chirped.

As soon as the stairs creaked from Lucy's receding footsteps, Isa flew out of bed and rummaged through her wardrobe. As quiet as a couple of church mice, she and Junior dressed, bumping into each other and grinning. He kissed her once on the lips, stopped, and came back for a second. After she checked that the coast was clear in the hall, Junior slunk into his room like a guilty polecat. Isa smiled all the way downstairs.