A Season For Love. Bj James

      “Does it, Maria Elena? Are we all intolerant snobs, simply because we aren’t all descendants of the Delacroix beauties? Have you forgotten that your lost summer girl was my little girl and my loss, as well?”

      “I…no.” Keeping her back to him, she shook her head slowly, then fell silent to stand mutely in sunset.

      In the broken denial, Jericho heard the threat of tears. He had to go to her then. Nothing on earth could have stopped him from holding her. Not even fear of rejection. Nor rejection itself.

      Yet when he gathered her in his embrace, she turned to him, her arms hard about him, her mouth lifting greedily to his.

      With Maria the initiator and the leader, their kiss was long and wild and deep. Her teeth nipped at his lips, but only for her tongue to soothe the hurt. Her hands slipped between the crush of their bodies to slide over his chest, his throat. Circling to his nape, her fingers tangled in the dark hair brushing his collar, but only to drag him fiercely down to her. She couldn’t get him close enough. The teasing caress of probing, twining tongues wasn’t deep enough, hard enough.

      “More,” she muttered as she released the clutch of his hair, and turned her attention to the buttons of his shirt. “I want to feel you. I want the touch of your skin on mine. I want your hands on me. I want you. Only and forever, you.”

      “No, my love. No.” He caught her hands, pinning them between the unyielding musculature of his chest and the enticing softness of her breasts. “I’m sooty. I stink of smoke and grease.”

      “You’re Jericho. That’s all that matters.” As she whispered the last, she leaned to kiss their joined hands. Then, slowly, her head lifted and she rose on tiptoe to touch her lips to the pulse that fluttered like a captured bird at the hollow of his throat. The touch of her tongue sent the heat of an inferno racing from his throat to pool hot and heavy in his groin.

      Then, she lifted her head to let her gaze reach into his. In the half light of twilight in an ever-darkening room, he saw that her eyes of shimmering silver were filled with fear. Not fear of dying, but of never having truly lived.

      She wanted him now, as an affirmation of life. In her eyes he saw grief for the little life they’d lost, for the life they’d never had together, even the life they might never have. But this moment was theirs. No one and nothing could take it from them.

      “Yes.” He answered the question she hadn’t asked, except with her eyes. “Yes.”

      In a single motion he nearly ripped her nightclothes from her body. Before the emerald silk could pool at her feet, he swept her into his arms to stalk the length of the room. Laying her gently on the bed, he straightened to tear away his own clothes.

      She watched him. As buttons ripped from their moorings, her gaze raked over every inch of exposed flesh. Next his belt was flung away. The snap at the waist of his trousers opened, the zipper growled. As if by magic, trousers and boots and every shred of clothing were gone from him.

      He towered over her, all six and a half manly feet of Jericho Rivers. So handsome, so aroused, so ready. He wanted her. He needed her more than he’d ever wanted, ever needed, before. Yet with all the strength and reason he possessed, he waited.

      Maria understood. She must set the pace. Allowing herself one last worshiping look, she opened her arms, whispering, “Make me feel real, Jericho. Teach me to be glad I’m alive.”

      Then he came down to her. There was no seduction, no foreplay. The time for that had passed. Maria Elena wanted what he wanted. She needed what he needed—his body joining with hers, stroking hers, hard, fast, deep. Over and over again until their bodies lifted and arched seeking even more.

      He didn’t think of hurting her. He didn’t feel her nails tearing across his shoulders and down his chest. He only heard her whisper yes, and yes, and yes, as he gathered her wrists in his hands and pinned them over her head.

      With her hands held captive as she arched to meet the power of his thrust, he bent to kiss her breast. Yet despite their madness, his suckling was as gentle as their mating was fierce.

      Her breasts were fragrant from the bath oils for which the Inn at River Walk was famous. Their flavor gathered in his lungs, on his skin, and his tongue. Flavors and scents that banished the acrid memory of explosives and fire. There was no car, no young thief, no burned hulk. Only a man and a woman. Only Jericho and Maria Elena.

      When he bent to suckle for the last time, he felt the first beginning shudders clasping him. Then she was struggling to free her hands, but only to draw his mouth to hers. Only to mate with him with lips and tongue, as she had with soul and body.

      This had begun out of unfathomed need. As coupling in animal heat. As lust. As sex. But it was cleansing passion and abiding love that drew them to its splendid conclusion.

      As she wrapped him in that splendor, giving of herself even as she took from him, she was his friend, the center of his universe. His reason for living.

      The woman he loved.

      His wife.