14. Andrew #2
The kiss began without urgency. Her mouth rested against his, warm from rye and canned peaches. He let himself feel the whole thing before answering: her hand settling at his jaw, her knee finding the space beside his, the careful way she waited for him to meet her.
Then he did.
He kissed her slowly and felt the restraint change. It did not break. It opened.
Mandy’s fingers moved into his hair. She had done that in the truck with pins falling and her dress gathered at her waist. This time nothing crowded them. No steering wheel, no glass revealing the road, no engine running beneath them.
Andrew rolled closer. The old bed ropes shifted. He put his arm around her waist and brought her against him.
She smiled into his mouth.
“What?”
“The bed is trying to object.”
“It has no authority.”
“That’s a very you thing to say.”
He kissed the smile away.
His hand moved under the hem of the flannel. Her skin was warm now, the cold driven out. He found the small of her back, the line of muscle beside her spine, and held her there while the kiss deepened.
Last night they had reached for whatever they could find through silk and wool. Tonight he wanted nothing between his hands and her.
He sat up and worked the buttons of the flannel.
Mandy watched his face. “You look worried.”
“I’m concentrating.”
“You’ve opened shirts before.”
“Not this one.”
The answer quieted her.
He opened the last button and eased the shirt from her shoulders.
Firelight moved over her skin. The ranch had changed her, but it had not erased the woman who arrived.
Strength lay under the softness now. A fading bruise marked one shin.
Her shoulders had grown lean from the fork and saddle.
The callus on her palm caught against his wrist when she touched him.
He put his hand over hers.
“These hands,” he said.
“What about them?”
“I had them wrong.”
“You had most of me wrong.”
“I know.”
She pulled his shirt loose. “Take this off before you turn it into an apology.”
He obeyed.
Her eyes moved over him without hurry. The gray on his chest. The scar beneath his ribs. The years he carried in his body and did not apologize for.
She touched the scar.
“Horse?”
“Bull gate.”
“Of course.”
“You expected gunfire?”
“I expected you to say it was none of my business.”
“It was a bull gate.”
She bent and kissed the scar.
The tenderness struck deeper than the sex in the truck had. He closed his hand around the back of her neck and held her there for one breath.
Mandy lifted her face. “Still here?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
They undressed without haste. Her long underwear. His belt and trousers. The practical wool socks she had doubled inside his boots. He took each foot in his hands as he freed it, warming the cold toes before setting them beneath the quilt.
She watched him do it.
“You did that the first night.”
“I remember.”
“I barely did.”
“You were freezing.”
“I remember your hands.”
He looked up.
She had no shield in her face.
Andrew moved over her.
For a moment they simply lay skin to skin, learning the weight of each other without urgency. Her arms came around his back. His mouth found the place below her ear, then her throat, the center of her chest where her heart beat fast beneath his lips.
“You’re afraid,” he said.
“So are you.”
“Yes.”
“Good. I would hate to be doing this alone.”
He laughed quietly against her skin.
“There,” she whispered. “Again.”
He kissed her instead.
He learned her slowly. The curve of her breast in his palm. The response that ran through her when his mouth closed over her nipple. The way her breath changed before her body did. She did not hold herself quiet tonight. When pleasure reached her, she let him hear it.
Mandy touched him with the same patience. Her palms traveled over his shoulders and down his arms. She traced the gray hair on his chest with one finger, then flattened her hand over his heart.
It beat hard against her.
“You hide this badly,” she said.
“Only from you.”
He had not intended to say it.
She heard the truth and pulled him down.
By the time he moved between her thighs, the room had narrowed to fire, breath, and the old bed shifting beneath them. He held himself above her and looked at her face.
“Mandy.”
“Yes.”
“I need you to tell me.”
“I want you.” Her hands came to his face. “Slow this time. Stay with me.”
He entered her carefully.
Her eyes closed, then opened again. She kept them on his as he moved deeper. The tight heat of her took him in stages. He stopped when her fingers tightened at his jaw.
“All right?”
“Yes.” She drew one leg higher around him. “Come closer.”
He did.
The first movement was small. Then another. He set a pace he could hold, slow enough to feel her adjust around him and the tremor that passed through her each time he returned.
Mandy met him without the cramped struggle of the truck or a dress caught beneath her knees. They moved together on the narrow bed, unhurried and certain.
Andrew kissed her while he moved. Her mouth, her throat, the corner of her eye when she turned her face. He wanted to know all of it. Wanted the time he had denied himself and the mornings he had not yet earned.
Her breathing quickened.
He slipped one hand between them.
She caught his wrist. “Wait.”
He stopped at once.
Mandy looked at him, color high in her face. “I want to feel this first.”
He took her hand and laced their fingers beside her head. Then he moved again, deeper, letting the pressure build without hurrying it.
Her body opened under him. The hand in his tightened. She lifted to meet each stroke, her other arm firm across his back.
“Andrew.”
He answered with her name.
She came slowly, the first contractions beginning around him before the rest of her surrendered. Her face changed beneath his. No performance, no careful beauty. Her mouth opened on a broken breath and her heels pressed into the backs of his legs as pleasure took her.
He watched.
She held his eyes through it.
The trust of that nearly finished him.
Andrew moved through the last of her trembling, his control thinning stroke by stroke. Mandy pulled him closer, her hands rough and warm against his back.
“Stay,” she said.
One word. Nothing hidden inside it.
He gave way.
He buried his face in her neck and came with her arms around him, every part of him held and no part being taken.
The storm went on against the roof.
For a while he lay with his weight braced above her, unable to move and unwilling to let the moment become the next one.
Mandy stroked the back of his neck.
“You can lie down,” she murmured. “I survived the cattle. I can survive your shoulder.”
He moved onto his side and brought her with him. The Pendleton had fallen to the floor. He reached for it, missed, and she caught his wrist.
“Leave it.”
“It’ll be cold later.”
“Then you’ll get it later.”
He pulled the quilt over them instead.
She settled with her back against his chest and drew his arm across her. Her fingers folded around his hand. The callus at the base of her thumb rested against his palm.
The words were there. He felt them rise and stop, old habit closing over them before they reached his mouth.
Mandy went still against him.
He thought she had felt the closing.
Then she lifted his hand and pressed it once against her heart.
“I hear you,” she said.
Andrew closed his eyes and held her while the snow covered the trail home.