“Was it?” She scrambled to her knees and shoved him in the chest angrily.
He nearly fell into the fire, especially since his eyes were riveted on her swaying breasts. “Are you nuts? Was it what?”
“A line? Was it a line?”
He started to smile.
“Don’t you dare smirk.” She stood, somehow managing to wrap one of the blankets protectively around her naked body in the process. It was a feminine knack he’d never been able to figure out. All women had it. Probably could be traced back to Roman toga days. Yeah, he could see it now. A goddess screwing a centurion until his forehead vine withered, then feeling the need to cover herself modestly with a sheet afterward.
“I wasn’t smirking,” he declared with a smirk, lying back down on the remaining blanket. Resting his head on arms folded under his neck, he watched as she moved to the woodpile, sulking. He really liked watching Helen move. He wondered if her nipples were still hard.
And those red curls of her… Damn, everything had happened so quickly, he hadn’t had time to really explore there. But he had lots of time now. A sudden thought occurred to him. Did I say “explore.” Oh, yeah, Marco Polo, eat your heart out. He planned to explore every latitude and longitude of her hemispheres. North Pole. South Pole. The Equator.
“You are so disgusting,” she said, glaring at him as if she could read his mind. With a snarl, she picked up a small log and threw it onto the dying fire. Sparks flew everywhere. One almost hit him in a delicate spot — real close to his Equator. He glanced over to see if she’d noticed.
She had, and she didn’t appear too concerned, either.
Women! Go figure!
“No, Helen, it wasn’t a line,” he conceded, deciding he’d teased her enough. “I’ve never said those words before… to any woman.” And you can be sure I won’t be so careless again.
“You haven’t?”
He looked up. Oh, great! The doe eyes again. “Listen, forget I ever said it. Pretend that — ”
“Forget? Forget?” she shrieked. “Women don’t forget things like that.”
Right! “Then don’t blow it up all out of proportion. It’s not like I’m proposing marriage or anything. Picket fences and babies weren’t my style before, and they aren’t now.”
Helen flinched. “I never said I wanted to marry you,” she said in a small voice, raising her chin haughtily.
Damn, he couldn’t seem to say the right thing. And now he’d managed to insult her, too. But his loose tongue was on a roll. “Good. Because marriage is a nonnegotiable item.”
The look she gave him could have peeled bark off a redwood. “Is that lawyer talk, or — ”
“Helen, let’s start over.” Rafe sat up and raked the fingers of both hands through his hair. “This is ridic — ”
“Or is it scared-to-the-bone-of-commitment man talk?”
“Damn straight.”
“Which one?”
“Both.”
“Hah! Cluck-cluck.”
“Are you saying I’m a chicken?”
She swept him with a telling assessment that lingered on his lower anatomy. “You do everything but cock-a-doodle-do.”
A grin crept over his lips, but he stopped it abruptly when he saw her drop down into a cross-legged position. Oh, no! “What?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’m going to meditate.”
She’s going to ooohm? Now? I knew things were going too smoothly. He groaned. “Ah, Helen, c’mon back over here. No meditating now. Let’s make love again. I’m a bumbling idiot, but I’ll make it up to you.”
“I’m too upset. I need to think — to find my center.”
“Baby, I’ve been to your center and it’s just fine. Take my word for it.”
Her face turned a delicious shade of pink but she refused to rise to his bait this time. Instead, she launched into a full-fledged chant. “Ooohm, ooohm, ooohm, ooohm….”
“At least you could take off that blanket,” he grumbled. “If you’re gonna give me a headache, I should be compensated with a little peek at your nipples.”
“Ooohm, ooohm, ooohm, ooohm….” Even though she was facing him across the fire, she stared straight ahead, her eyes blank.
That really irritated him. He didn’t like the fact that she could go from red-hot sex to cool indifference in such a short time. Especially when his body was still in a fever.