HER IDEAL MAN Read online

  He lifted his head, dizzy, and looked at her. Struggling to be fair, to halt the forward tumble before it could damage them, he said, "There won't be anything but this, Anna. I don't have anything else to give you."

  The black eyes were sober and somehow shining, all at once. "I know," she said, and, impossibly, smiled. "I know."

  And she pulled him down to her again, deep into the passion of her kisses, into the wonder that was a gypsy as free as the wolf to wander where she would and take what came, with no thought for tomorrow. And just this once, Tyler, too, would let go of everything but now. Now, in this minute, with Anna.

  The position was awkward, and Tyler grabbed the quilt, and spread it on the floor before the fire, letting go of her to spread it out. She sat up, watching, and he thought, now she would come to her senses. But when he settled atop the quilt and shed his shirt—his offering to her—she came to him, and knelt before him, and put her arms around his shoulders, pressing her breasts close, putting her mouth on his jaw.

  She straightened suddenly to look at him, a frown on that smooth white forehead. "What about condoms? A baby would be a disaster."

  "I'm fixed," he said, and there was a strange, distant sorrow in him over that.

  A fleeting shadow touched her eyes and was gone, and then she was against him, pressing herself close. "Don't hurry," she whispered. "Let me really touch you."

  "No hurry," he said roughly, pulling her tightly against him. He rubbed his hands up and down her spine, feeling the sweater bunch and grow moist with the heat of his palms as it slid over her skin. Her hands moved on him, on his back and over his waist and into his hair and, finally, she held his face between her hands, touching his brow and eyelids and mouth before she tilted her head and kissed him.

  Roaring built in his blood, a pounding, furious need that threatened to engulf him. Tyler pulled back, gasping and holding on to her shoulders, and held her at arm's length. She settled easily on her bottom, reaching to put her hands on his thighs. Firelight gave a gossamer covering of orange light to her form. It swept along her cheek and jaw and the edge of her neck.

  He held her patient gaze for a long moment, and realized she wanted to look at him in this fine light, too. He forced himself to be patient, to wait while the dark gaze touched him, crown to lips to chest.

  But then the need grew in him, ragged in its ferocity, and with one smooth gesture, he reached for her sweater and skimmed the edges of the V downward, slowly revealing the smooth white shoulders, the sweet upper swell of her breasts and the slimness of her upper arms. His hands shook a little, and he paused in anticipation and an effort to make himself take things slowly.

  She shifted, putting her hands on his thighs as if in encouragement, and Tyler found his touch steady, and resumed the exquisite torture of disrobing her. The sweater slid easily over her breasts, and she freed her arms, letting it pool at her waist, then simply lifted her eyes, utterly comfortable with her breasts bared to his gaze, to his touch, as if she knew it was too much for him, that each little step of this was no simple thing for him.

  He would make it last, he told himself. So first he filled his eyes with her. He'd never seen a woman with such colors, not even in the forbidden pictures his brothers and he had smuggled out of the construction offices. Her skin was white as alabaster, and took the colors of the fire like some rare pearl, luminescent along the surprisingly rich curve of a breast, the deep-rose nipples. Her shoulders and rib cage were small, but when he lifted his hands, her breasts fit his palms exactly—a sensation like no other, that oddly weighted flesh nestling in his lifting palms.

  It roused her, Tyler saw, looking back to her face. Her eyes were aflame, limpid luminosity sparking higher as he caressed her there, explored the curves. When he stroked his thumb over her nipples, once, lightly, her nostrils flared and her lips parted. Tyler swayed forward to nip those parted lips, and slid his tongue between them hungrily.

  She gripped his shoulders, and he felt the sharpness of nails against his skin, a sensation that sent his sex into screaming arousal. He gasped and pushed her backward, shifting his hands to her wrists, which he pulled over her head. Madness filled him, a madness born of the war of his sensual nature with his chosen celibacy, and he knew which side was winning. The animal had broken free.

  Nestling one thigh hard between her legs, Tyler bent over her and opened his mouth on her throat, sucking hard once before he moved lower, and nipped her lightly on the top curve of one breast.

  She arched against him, her arms straining against his grip, her hips arching into him. With the very tip of his tongue, he touched the very tip of her nipple, and Anna cried out softly.

  And then, oh, the taste of her was too much. He tumbled entirely into a consuming hunger, feasting with decadence on the pleasures of her, the nubby taste of her nipples, the nectar of her cries as he suckled her deep, rolling her flesh in his mouth so that he would not forget just this texture, just this huge ache of thrusting want where he pressed against her, where she pressed upward to him.

  He tasted her belly, with the flat of his tongue and the suck of his lips and the nip of his teeth, and when he encountered the waistband of the sweats, he tugged them down to show pretty little lace panties. And he touched her, her thighs and the juncture between them, conjuring heat and damp cries and quivering from her. She clutched his hair in great handfuls and dragged his face to hers, and kissed him with almost violent need, and Tyler loved that she could be so wild, that her need seemed as insane as his own, that there was an almost unholy bewitchment upon them, a spell of passion they were helpless to resist.

  Only then did he pause, and straddle her waist, so she could free him. With trembling hands, she unfastened the buttons containing him, and impatiently dragged the jeans from his hips. He helped her, shifting to rid himself of the clothing, but she wrapped her hands around his thighs and pulled him back to that straddling position.

  And she touched him. Touched his belly and his sex with equal pleasure, her eyes following the path of her hands. But when her hands closed on his rigid sex, he groaned, and pulled away. "I can't…" he said, moving quickly before he humiliated himself. He lay against her for a moment, trying to think of something, anything, else. The firewood, the storm, the wolf—

  But her hands moved with gypsy magic over his shoulders, into his hair. Her mouth teased his jaw, his neck, his ear. And he felt her shifting below him, spreading her legs, arching upward. Inviting him to join with her.

  With a groan, he accepted the invitation, urgently catching her buttocks in his hands, lifting her closer to him and, at last, entry to the cavern, a slow, agonizing slide. A gasp tore from his throat at the deep, overwhelming pleasure of it.

  She tensed against him, and Tyler felt a slight resistance. He lifted his head, puzzled. "You aren't a virgin?"

  "Come to me, Tyler," she whispered, and the agonized passion in her throat would have sent him over the edge even if she had not gripped him, her heels digging close, and arched hard, sending him deep.

  He was lost, his mouth hard on her neck, his member deep and tight in that glorious heat, and there was nothing but the passion of Anna all around him, pulsing and crying and sensually writhing. "Please," she sobbed against him, not a tearful sob, but that nearly overwhelmed sound of a woman who did not quite—

  He knew.

  He knew. He gave her what she desperately wanted, and he loved it that her cry was feral, deep and guttural and all of her body shuddered around him, against him, in his arms. She bit his shoulder, like a cat, and her fingernails hurt his shoulders, and it was everything it should be, everything, as he pulled her violently to him and thrust with the madness until he could let go, until all of Anna and all of him were somewhere in the wild heart of the world, and he threw back his head and, silent, Tyler howled like a wolf at the welcome power of his release.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

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  Tyler collapsed against her, and Anna hel
d him, her breath and his ragged and hurried, their skin slick with sweat. In that first, dazzling moment, she felt iridescent, as insubstantial and light-filled as a scene within a crystal ball. She loved the feeling of him all around her, his body heavy with release, his hair against her fingers, the sticky and slippery feel of their skin. His hand cupped her head, his fingers moving in her hair, and his breath fell on her neck, hot and moist.

  And in her exuberance, Anna could not be silent. "Holy cow," she breathed, and heard the laughter in the words.

  Tyler said nothing. Only pressed his face into her neck and kissed the column of her throat with a gentleness that nearly broke her heart. He kissed her chin, and finally lifted his head to kiss her mouth, his ethereal eyes open and serious. He took his weight on his elbows. "Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine," she whispered. And, really, that was all she could manage. Caught in the beauty of his glorious eyes, her body pulsing and tingling, she had no desire for him to go anywhere. She touched the wings of his eyebrows and the clean line of the aquiline nose. He dipped and caught her finger, sucking it into his mouth, and a new wave of sensation moved through her. "Are you okay?"

  "I'm dizzy," he said, lowering his head to murmur the words against her lips. As if her mouth contained some nectar, he drank again, deeply, and the powerful body moved against her, his chest brushing her breasts, his stomach pressed hard against hers. "I feel crazy with wanting you. Again. And again."

  His hips moved aggressively, and Anna found a new sensation spreading through her loins. She had thought they were finished, but there he was, moving again, but this time slowly, sending rippling pleasure through her. Slow, slow, slow, and his lips moved on her, and one hand strayed to her breast and teased a nipple, and Anna felt the heat growing, thickening, until her breath was again small, panting cries that punctuated his movements.

  And this time Anna burst into flames with him, shuddering as he let go, as he gripped her so tightly and the world swirled and spun and wild explosions rocked her body.

  He fell over her, kissing her neck, her cheek. "Anna, you're wonderful, so free."

  And at last they lay sated before the fire, bodies shining side by side in the firelight. Anna touched him lazily, letting her hands wander over the round of muscle in his upper arm, and over the actual ripples of his belly, and in turn his big hands touched her breasts and her hip and her thighs, wandering, learning. "I never imagined you to have so much muscle," she said quietly. "I thought you would be too thin, and you aren't."

  A glint grew in his eye. "Does that mean you imagined my body naked?"

  Anna blushed. "Well—" She stopped, realizing how ridiculous it was to be blushing over what she'd thought after what she'd done. She raised her eyes. "Yes, actually, I did. Often."

  With one finger, he traced the curve of her lip. "Your mouth drives me crazy. You can't imagine how many times I got hard just looking at your mouth."

  "Tyler!" she protested.

  "Sorry. See why I could never talk to women?" He sobered. "I really meant it as a compliment."

  She smiled. "I'll take it that way, then."

  A warm silence fell. Firelight made the hair on his thigh a red-gold glaze, and, idly, she stroked the long limb.

  "Anna," he said.

  Here it came, she thought, and raised her head.

  "You were a virgin."

  "It doesn't matter, Tyler."

  "It does to me."

  Firmly, she caught his hand. "Don't." She chose her words carefully. "Don't think it was some sacrifice on my part. It wasn't." It was hard to express what she meant, and she paused, trying to think of some way to tiptoe around the whole business.

  In the end, she simply blurted out the truth. "When I opened my eyes and saw you looking at me like that, it was like this wonderful gift. Something to make up for all the chocolate cheesecake I never ate, and the nights I had to spend studying while my sisters went out, and all the dangerous, sexy boys my brothers chased off." Earnestly, she kissed his palm. "For once, I got to indulge myself with something I wanted."

  His expression was grave, and he touched her face. "I needed you this weekend, Anna. You'll never know how much."

  Yes, she did. But the moment was growing too serious, and that would ruin all of it, so she lifted up on one elbow saucily. "And what a trade! I got to learn a new skill."

  That coaxed a genuine chuckle from his throat, and he reached for her playfully. "So you're using me, huh?"

  She nodded brightly. "Is that okay with you? You do seem to have an understanding of the finer points."

  The pale eyes went sultry, and that gorgeous, sensual mouth moved closer. "I know a lot more, if you want some more lessons."

  "Oh, yes, please," she whispered, and let him kiss her again.

  * * *

  The night was enchanted, Anna thought later as Tyler dozed beside her. To one end of their makeshift pallet on the floor were the remains of supper—sandwiches made from saltines, cups of tea, cookies and cheese. Now, replete, Anna leaned against the couch and sipped blackberry brandy and admired Tyler.

  In the general region of her heart was an ache, equal parts wonder and poignance. If she had felt she'd stumbled into the pages of a fairy tale before, the feeling was trebled now. It was as if some witch in the forest, seeing how the storm had trapped the two of them together, had cast a spell over the cabin, over Tyler. A spell that would last only as long as the snow.

  It almost hurt to look at him. His long, lean body was sprawled on the quilt before the fire, his head was cradled on his arm, and he was splendidly, unashamedly naked. And to Anna he looked like an artist's vision, made of gold light and supple flesh and impossibly beautiful angles. She drank in every inch of him. His hair, the hair of a knight, so long and clean and shining; his arms, so surprisingly well-defined, a vein running visibly over the round of a biceps. She gazed at his long, smooth back, and at the curve of his rear end, so firm and round and high; down the length of his thighs, his calves; his elegant, long feet.

  And then she looked again at his face, at his beautiful haunted, aristocratic face, and a pain went through her. She drew her knees up to herself, hugging them close to ease away the pain. Visions of that mouth on hers, those eyes so fiery with need, flickered over her imagination, sending remembered heat through her limbs.

  "Oh, sweet Mary," she whispered aloud. How could fate be so cruel as to give and take in the same moment?

  But that, she knew well, was the price of enchantments. The warning was always the same, wasn't it? Be careful what you wish for.

  Fighting off the ache, she stared at the fire and sipped the plum-colored brandy. Surely there was some way to win her quest. Perhaps when the snow stopped, when they went again their separate ways, Tyler would find he could not do without her, after all. Perhaps through the very real, very intense magic of their physical attraction to each other, he would somehow be saved.

  His hand fell on her foot, and Anna started. "Penny for your thoughts," he said.

  Anna shook her head and, appallingly, felt herself close to tears. Hastily she swallowed them and lowered her eyes.

  "Oh, hey." Suddenly, that long beautiful body was wrapped around her, and he dragged the quilt around them, making a cave of cloth and his body. He pulled her close, pressing her head to his chest, and kissed her crown. "Let me hold you, okay?"

  It was ridiculous, this sudden emotionalism. "It's nothing," she whispered. "Just a sudden rush of melancholy."

  "I understand." With a sweetness she would not have expected, he rocked her a little. "Don't be ashamed, Anna. This is beautiful, you know." His arms were fierce around her. "So beautiful I feel like I'm dreaming. Like I'm going to wake up and you will never have come for that teddy bear at all, I just dreamed it."

  Against her cheek, his chest was warm and smelled of wood smoke and the essence of Tyler himself. "I'm not ashamed," she said quietly. "I'll never be ashamed of this."

  "Good. I would hate that."


  She shifted to look at him. "It's going to be weird when I see you after this, though. I have to admit that much."

  A shadow crossed his face. "Anna, I don't want you to be hurt by this. I don't have casual sex." He paused and looked away, as if he were embarrassed. "I've never had a woman except Kara. I never wanted one." He touched her cheek with his fingertips. "But this is only for now. That's all. That's the only way I can bear to—" he looked away "—to allow myself."

  "I know, Tyler." She found a smile. "Let's make a deal. I won't feel ashamed, and you won't feel guilty."

  For a moment, he looked surprised. Maybe that she would know it was guilt that drove him. Then he nodded. Soberly.

  "Let's also not think about anything but now," she said. "We'll forget there is another world, or a past, or future, until the snow stops."

  "Deal." He kissed her, then shifted so that they were both facing the fire. "Tell me a story, Anna."

  She laughed. "A story?"

  "Yes. You tell Curtis stories. I've heard you. Tell me one."

  "Okay, but you have to sing a song when I'm done. Fair is fair."

  "A song? You sure you want to be tortured like that?"

  "Oh, no, you don't. Your brother told me you sing ballads and things at the RenFair." She pulled back to look at him. "Is that why you have your hair so long? So you look right for the festival?"

  He touched it self-consciously. "Is it strange, my hair?"

  "No," Anna protested. "Not at all. It looks right on you. I just wondered why."

  He said nothing, and Anna guessed this, too, went back to Kara. "No big thing. What kind of story do you want?"

  He settled closer. "Anything you want to tell."

  "Hmmm…" She tossed a few around in her head, then began, "Once upon a time, there was a very beautiful woman, a woman everyone in every village for miles around wanted."

  "Of course."

  She smiled. "You can't interrupt unless I prompt you."