eased her fingernails out of his hide and laced his fingers with hers. “Don’t tell me…” She could feel his head shaking back and forth over her head. “You’re afraid of the dark.”
“Sorry. It is a curse, something that has plagued me since I was very small.”
“I can turn the light back on, but the batteries will eventually fade, and we might have trouble finding our way back out of the cave.”
“Do not concern yourself about me. I will be fine.” Trying to keep her teeth from chattering, Katya aimed for nonchalance, failing miserably.
Maddox’s other arm tightened around her and he pulled her snugly against him. “Close your eyes and listen.”
“What?”
“Just do as I say.”
Katya squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the cave’s endless darkness. Now it was just her own darkness she had to overcome.
“Let me tell you a story my grandfather, James Thunder Horse, used to tell us as children.” Maddox’s voice hummed off the rocks, creating a warmth of spirit no heater or fire could generate. He spoke of a bear lost in the hills, trying to find his way home. Of a sly fox who led the bear farther away from home and a wise old wolf whose ferocity and courage helped the bear discover those virtues in himself. Ultimately, the bear found his way home, depending on the generosity of the wolf, and the assistance of the stars and the sun.
Katya’s eyes remained closed throughout the story. Instead of relaxing, her body stiffened with increasing desire, each muscle and nerve intensely aware of Maddox, responding to the rhythm of his voice, the vibrations of his chest in a way she could not have imagined in the palace back home. “You have a gift.” A gift possessed by no man she had ever met.
“It helps when you’re lying naked with a stranger.”
Katya could feel the strength in his body, the tautness of his muscles beneath her fingertips. She had never been this intimate with a man. Confined as they were in a cave, miles from everyone. Alone.
Even when she had explored sex with a classmate in the small school she had attended, she had not felt this close, as though their bodies melded into one.
Her hand slid across the hard planes of his chest, memorizing the texture and shape with her mind, imagining what it would feel like to love a man like this. To let him make love to her.
The heat in the sleeping bag intensified and her hand slipped lower. Would he be as hard all over? Her hand followed the ridges of his abdomen, sliding over the indentation of his belly button.
When her fingertips bumped into the steely velvet of his erection, a big hand caught her wrist, holding it in a vise grip.
“Don’t start something you can’t or won’t finish,” he said, his voice strained.
“I have never been with a man in a sleeping bag.”
“Then maybe now’s not the time to start.”
“I must apologize. I cannot seem to help myself. You do something to me.”
“You don’t know me, and I don’t know who you really are.”
“What do you want to know? I am a woman. I am unmarried. I do not have any diseases and I am twenty-seven, old enough to make my own decisions.” Perhaps she said the words to appease his conscience, but more likely the words came out to quiet her father’s voice in her head. Either way, the words were for her more than him, and she recognized them for what they were. Permission to let go.
“Sex between a man and a woman takes two to decide.”
He was right. Playing with Maddox Thunder Horse could be like playing with fire. But she wanted the heat he could provide, both outside and in.
Since her mother’s death when she was only sixteen, she had been the perfect daughter to her father, playing hostess to foreign diplomats, always doing and saying the right things, never stepping outside the bounds of etiquette. “For once in my life I want to make a decision for myself. For me alone. Not for my father. Not for the people around me.” She twisted her fingers around to lace them with his. “I know what I want.” Then another thought sobered her. “Do you not find me attractive?”
He sucked in a breath and guided her hand to that part of him standing at stiff attention. “You tell me.” His grip tightened on her. “If this is a tease, forget it.”
Her hand closed around him. “I am stuck in a cave with a man I find very attractive and who obviously finds me not completely hideous. It is quite dark. We are cold and I am not teasing.” She stroked her hand down his length, loving the contrast of velvet and steel. “Make love to me.”
For a long moment Maddox hesitated. “This has to be wrong.” His hand closed over hers, tightening her grip around him. Then he let go to slide upward to cup a full, rounded breast.
Katya’s back arched, pressing her breast into his hand, hungry for his touch, for the feel of his lips against her skin.
Trailing his fingers over her breast to cup her chin, he drew her to him, bringing their lips within a hair’s width of each other.
The warmth of his breath brushed across her lips and her mouth parted, a sharp draw of longing tugging at her core.
“I might regret this later, but for now…” His lips captured hers, grinding against her teeth, the force of his claim branding her with a desire so intense it stole her breath away. He moved against her, his sex rigid, pressing into her belly.
She shimmied out of her panties, while he unhooked the clasp on her bra. When she lay as naked as Maddox, Katya’s legs fell open, letting him slide between her thighs. He eased her onto her back, settling down over her. Then he thrust into her long and hard, filling her, stretching her deliciously.
Their bodies melded into one, the heat they generated making their skin slick with sweat.
And she wanted more.
She raised her knees, her hands gripping his buttocks, driving him faster, harder, and deeper into her, until she lost all sense of time and place. They came together as two separate people, but now they were as one in body and spirit, riding a wave of sensation so intense Katya almost forgot how to breathe. As she plunged over the edge of reason, she let go of her worries, and clung to the present and his body.
Eventually, sleep claimed her, wrapping her in warmth and security. She was assured of her safety, if only as long as she remained in his arms.
Minutes, hours, days could have passed before she returned to earth, the floor hard against her back, an icy draft cooling her damp skin.
In a half-sleep state, she listened for sounds of the storm outside. Silence filled the dark interior. No wailing screamed in through the cave’s rocky entrance.
With consciousness, reason and memories returned. A few hours ago she had woken up with a stranger, sharing his body’s warmth, both of them practically naked.
Katya moved, her knee sliding down Maddox’s leg, her bare thigh rubbing against his leg. She sucked in a gasp and her naked breasts pressed into his equally naked chest.
She
