Sierra Seduction (5 page)

An image lit his mind, a co-worker’s office, a gorgeous landscape that drew him to read the writing below and see what mountain it was. It had looked so familiar. But before he made out the words, he saw the man bathing in the stream and turned away, a blush heating his cheeks. “Holy shit, you did that calendar
? And the magazines? You’re using another name, though…Marley something?

“Marley Peaks. I had to be able to show my face in town and at the gallery,
thus the pseudonym. I’m a serious artist, you know. But serious didn’t pay the bills and honestly? I like this new subject matter.” Her laughter rang in the tent. “You know me so well.”

He joined her until, abruptly, they both stopped and, releasing her leg, he lay beside her, searching her face.

She wet her lips. “Val, it’s true, isn’t it? You know me better than anyone…even…”

She fell silent, the light gone from her eyes, and he realized she hadn’t lived in stasis while he’d been married to someone else, making love with someone else and trying not to think of her too much.
But more than once he’d found himself in the shower, stroking his cock and murmuring her name as cum spurted from him.

His Mickie had taken another man—men—into her arms, into her body. A jealousy he wasn’t entitled to tightened his muscles and se
nt away the light, sensuous feel of their play. What right did he have to demand her faithfulness when he’d thrown her offer of her innocence in her face?

The air cooled between them and he lay next to her for a while, trying to process the new Mickie. Marley Peaks. The notorious photographer whose photographs were everywhere, with varying degrees of male nudity displayed. Yet, for all the talk of her, she’d done only print
interviews, and…and radio.

Crossing his arms under his head, he licked his lips. “I heard you on the radio. In Cincinnati, when I was there meeting with a client. I was searching for some kind of news and paused on a talk station.”

He’d heard her. The voice he’d missed for so long. And not even recognized. How could he have not known? But his body had known. The longer he’d listened, the more his cock twitched. He’d just put it down to the photographer’s sexy voice.

“Yes,” she murmured
, her voice holding those same notes. “I do a lot of those and some of them are syndicated. It’s the deal I made with the agent who handles my work. But I never show my face except during my shoots. I don’t want the notoriety.”

He didn’t blame her. Rolling to his side, he rested a hand on her abdomen. She didn’t pull away. He still had a hard time imagining her with anyone else, but she’d had the same right to a life he did. A worse thought occurred to him.

“Are you married?” He waited for the answer, terrified at what she might reply. He didn’t believe in cheating either, but for a night with her—his morals would be stretched thin.

“No, widowed, more or less.” Her voice held a sadness he didn’t like to hear for some other guy. How could he envy a dead man? “Silas and I were together for a long, long time but we never made it legal.”

“And you miss him.”

She nodded. “I do. We were best friends.”

They’d been best friends, once. This Silas guy had taken his place, picked up where he left off, in her life and in her bed. Even if he hadn’t been her first, the guy had been her longtime lover. “Lucky stiff.”

Ouch. Bad choice of words

She shrugged and rolled toward him, his hand gliding around to cup her waist with the motion. “He’s gone now. He treated me well. He loved me. Of course I miss him.” She rested her head on his chest where his thumping heart greeted her. He loved her; she didn’t say she loved him. But he wasn’t stupid enough to go any further down that path to pain. “Do you miss Julia?”

Did he? With Mickie snuggled against him in a tent in the mountains, he felt as if the last thirty-five years had melted away. As if he might still have the chance to say yes and be her first.
Her only.

“We’d drifted so far apart, as if we never were close. When she asked me to leave, we shook hands good-bye.”

“Oh.” Her cry shook him, made him ache for all the loss of time together, for the years he and his wife pranced about dressed up in fine clothes as if any of that mattered. Why had it taken so long to realize it didn’t?

“Don’t feel bad for her. She has someone else. Someone who she says gives her the passion we never shared.”

Was
his ex crazy? Michaela couldn’t keep herself from touching him. From tracing his cheeks and rubbing the back of her hand over his beard-scruffed chin and throat. How could anyone not feel passion for a man so virile? He’d been everything she dreamed about back then, but the years had made him irresistible.

Beyond thought, not wanting to talk about their past anymore, she cupped the back of his head and pulled him to her lips. He responded with more than passion. With voracious hunger he took her mouth, tongue plunging inside. Any sense of nostalgia fell away, replaced with a desire to recreate the past, to fuck him until neither of them remembered a life before.

She opened to him, daring him to take her. His taste was the same, sweet and outdoorsy as if he chewed on pine, and she tangled her tongue with his in a complicated dance, sending hot need straight to her aching pussy. She fumbled under his sweatshirt, desperate to feel his skin under her palms.

To touch him. She wanted to touch him.

He slowed his kisses, reaching to still her hands at his waist.

“Slow down, baby,” he murmured against her lips “We have all night. I’m not rushing something I’ve waited so long for.”

“You didn’t have to wait. I offered.”

His lips slipped from hers, over her cheek and his hot breath seared her ear. “More the fool, I. But now I intend to take you up on it.” Nibbling the delicate shell, he took her lobe in his mouth and sucked, sending fierce shivers over her skin.

She gasped a breath. “What if I rescind it?”

“Oh, baby,” he breathed, “You don’t want to do that.”

Damn right she didn’t, but a tiny shard of fractured pride made her say, “I might.”

“Mmm, you taste like sunshine and the outdoors.
No more cherry gloss?”

He remembered her favorite lip gloss
? From a few kisses? Her heart stumbled. “If I say no?”

He mouthed the side of her neck, sucking and nibbling on the skin there until she didn’t care if the sun never came up.

“Are you saying no?” He nipped her and she yelped. “If you say no, I’ll never get to taste that pussy of yours, find out if it’s as sweet as the rest of you.”

Dear god.

He grasped the hem of her sweatshirt and tugged it up. “Lift your arms.”

She did and the garment disappeared, leaving her in her thin cotton T-shirt. “I don’t think you deserve me.”

“Mmm, no.” Gliding his hands around her back, he arched her toward him and bent to mouth a nipple through the fabric. “God, baby, how can you still be so firm.”

She moaned,
panties soaked with her juices, hypnotized by his deep, erotic voice. When he pulled her T-shirt off, she made no move to stop him. They’d been here before and her nipples remembered.

“Sweet, so sweet.” He nuzzled one breast then the other before sucking
a nipple into his mouth and playing with it, lapping and laving, nipping and biting just enough to straddle the line between pleasure and pain.

Michaela held the back of his head, riding higher and higher, eyes closed, sensation blinding her to everything but the pleasure of his amazing, talented mouth. He finished with one
tit and moved to the other, leaving the wet tip of her breast diamond hard in the chill air.

“I want…I want….”

What did she want? What she’d always wanted. What she’d begged him for thirty-five years before. The memory cooled her for a moment until he sat up and unbuttoned her jeans. She raised her hips, wanting them off as soon as possible. Passion climbed again when he grasped the elastic of her bikini panties and drew the lacy fabric down her legs. Then nothing protected her from his sight, his touch, his cock.

She blinked. Val sat, still clothed, beside her. She raised her arms to him and he
grasped her wrists and lifted them above her head. “Keep them there, baby. I want to look at you.” Despite the cold air, passion steamed the air in the tent.

Trembling under his scrutiny, she did as he asked, tangling her fingers to keep them away from her body. She’d never been proud or ashamed of it.
Never thought about it all that much. Until now, when his eyes devoured every inch of her, burning a path from her socked toes to her throat. Forever. He looked at her forever while her nipples got even harder and moisture seeped between her thighs.

How could he do this to her without even setting a hand on her?

Just when she thought she’d combust, he shifted, moving between her legs and raising them over his shoulders. “Now I taste.” He brought his mouth to her pussy and blew on it. “And I’m going to take my time.” The young man had been filled with enthusiasm but this Val had a mature touch and knew just how to please a woman.

She whimpered, clenching her fingers tighter together over her head. He palmed her ass and brought her cunt closer to his lips, running his tongue over
it slowly then extending it and gliding it over her from the top of her pussy to her dark opening Then again. She shuddered with each pass, wanting to scream but not wanting to attract…what? Bears? Rangers. She bit her lip until she tasted blood.

He paused at her clit, sucking it into his mouth. He circled
the tight bundle of nerves with the tip of his tongue while sliding a finger into her and curling it forward, catching her G-spot.

She
came with a rush, shrieking her pleasure, tumbling over the top of the highest peak she’d ever climbed, screaming his name and grinding her cunt against his mouth.

“Val, yes! Yes! Oh, god!”

Stars shot behind her closed eyes—when had she closed them?—and her hands flew to his head, holding him in place. Overwhelmed, she panted, trying to get air, to breathe, to hear past the thunder of her heart in her ears until, it stilled.

And she looked down the line of her body to see Valiant, her almost lover from long ago, eyeing her with lips shiny with her
essence. She began to sob.

Val’s haze vanished at her pitiful cries. Mickie covered her face and shook, not with the pleasure of a moment ago but with something else. He disentangled himself from her legs and moved up beside her.

“Baby, Mickie, I’m sorry. Didn’t you want me to…that is
…we don’t have to do anything else. I thought—” Damn he’d ruined the single night they would ever have. If there had ever been a chance of more, he’d blown it by…by….

By making her come? By coming on too strong?

“What did I do wrong?”

Her shoulders shook harder and sounds came from behind her hands until she lowered them and convulsed in a ball. Of…laughter?
Her cheeks were streaked with tears, but she was laughing.

“Val, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m happy, I think. Happy to be with you, sad for the loss of so much time, and overwhelmed at how good it felt.” She
smoothed her features and knelt up, next to him. “I don’t know where we’re going from here, this may be a moment time has granted us. We don’t know much about each other, but for tonight, let’s go for it. Not like last time, okay? Because if you refuse to fuck me now, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

For a long moment, neither spoke and he became aware of the thud of snow
fall against the tent. He scooted farther from the wall, not wanting to touch the nylon and allow any moisture to penetrate. Old hiker’s trick. Staying warm and dry held the key to survival.

And body heat.

They had that covered. In flames.

“Baby, I made that mistake once and I’ve regretted it for thirty-five years.”

He struggled to shuck off his jeans and sweatshirt while she watched with eager eyes. What would she think of him? When they’d last been together, he’d been lightly tanned from a summer of trail building, often without a shirt on, muscles toned and hair dark and wavy.

He dragged the T-shirt over his head. No tan
. He wore stronger sunscreen to keep his doctor happy. And he’d lost some muscle tone by spending more time in that damn, stifling office than out on a mountainside. His hair had gone white at an early age, in his forties…but at least he still had a lot of it. As he emerged from the fabric, he swallowed hard. And remembered something. “I didn’t bring any condoms. Shit!”

“Okay…well pregnancy isn’t an issue anymore.” Not that he would care if it were. He adored his daughters but how had he denied himself a child with Michaela?
Ass!
“And Silas and I were exclusive for over thirty years.”

He hated that man. Thirty years with Michaela. Even if he managed to convince her of his worthiness, they’d be lucky to approach that length of time. He swore he’d do his best to convince her by morning. He’d do anything.