His words echoed in my head, going around and around until they became a chant. We were meant for each other. We had a rare bond, one that few people experienced. It would be the sheerest folly to discard such a gift, wouldn’t it?
It would. I gave myself up to the feelings that his touch had triggered, feelings that whipped through me until I felt like I was caught in an whirlwind of passion, desire, and heat so great I thought it would surely consume me.
“Gwen, tell me now if you really do not want me,” he said against my lips, his hand pulling the mail up my body. “Because I won’t be able to stop if I kiss you just one more time.”
I said nothing, but wrapped one leg around him and kissed him with the power of all my tangled emotions. I knew what I was doing wasn’t smart, wasn’t the least bit wise, and certainly was going to mean a world of trouble not only for myself and my mothers but for my heart, but at that moment nothing really mattered but Gregory.
And then suddenly he was gone, having leaped up off me with a strangled oath. I sat up, bereft, my body still humming its happy little song of anticipation. Gregory stood twisted to the side, trying to see behind him.
“Your damned horse bit my ass!” His face was filled with outrage as he turned to show me the tear in his pants.
I collapsed laughing when he charged over to where Bottom was standing, an innocent expression on his horsey face while Gregory threatened him with all sorts of dire punishments. I was well aware that I’d just had a very, very narrow escape.
The question was whether I would be so lucky the next time.
NINE
“How’s your behind?”
Gregory pulled his thoughts from the dark place they’d gone ever since the scene some hours earlier, and experimentally flexed a butt cheek. “It’s better. No thanks to that carnivore you’ve been riding.”
Gwen stifled a giggle, but he heard it nonetheless, and he managed to share a sour look between both her and the horse she led, all the while adopting a martyred air.
“Sorry,” she said with contriteness that didn’t for one minute fool him. “I know that being on the receiving end of those teeth isn’t funny, but if you could have seen the look on your face when he did it . . .”
Her words trailed away again, leaving her throat working as she fought to keep from laughing out loud.
He thinned his lips and looked straight ahead. They were walking the horses in order to let them have a break from constant riding, and he had found the exercise beneficial to his thoughts. If nothing else, marching across the landscape made it hard for one to be aroused. “It’s not the bite I object to so much as it is the interruption. I can now attest to the fact that it’s impossible to seduce a sweetly ripe maiden when one’s ass has been manhandled. Or in this case, horsehandled.”
Gwen lost her fight and whooped with laughter.
“Sorry,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “‘Horsehandled’ pushed me over the edge.”
“Delighted to provide amusement.” He tried to preserve his injured mien, but failed. Even if his posterior was the one that had suffered the abuse, it had been a very funny—if wholly frustrating—moment.
“Ugh.” Gwen pulled her mail shirt out from her plump, tempting breasts and tried to generate a breeze. “Not to be gross, but I’m just a giant ball of sweat in this mail. I don’t suppose there’s an afterlife hotel around here where I can take a shower?”
“I doubt that any such facility exists. However . . .” He squinted into the distance. “Yes, the woman at the stables said we should let the horses have a rest at a small lake. We are more than halfway to the camp, assuming that water ahead is the lake she mentioned.”
“A lake.” She made a face that turned into a shrug. “It’s no hot shower, but if there aren’t leeches or water moccasins or anything icky like that, it sounds like heaven. Ha. Afterlife. Heaven.”
He looked at her.
She gave him a wry smile that made his stomach turn over. “Sorry. My jokes are suffering the effect of the heat, too.”
“I find you nothing but delightful.”
“Yes, but that’s because you want to get into my pants.”
“That is highly offensive.” He frowned, wondering if he had given her that impression by his actions or if she just held misguided notions about men. Perhaps it was both. “If I have led you to believe that I desire you simply for your ample, lush person, then allow me to disabuse you of that notion right now. I believe I’ve mentioned the fact that my cousin’s wife claims I could be a model. Whether or not that’s true, the fact remains that women have always been available to me. Women of all hues, sizes, and shapes, I would add.”
Gwen looked furious. For some reason, that pleased him. Could it be she was jealous of the other women who’d been in his life, even though they had little meaning to him now that she occupied his attention? “Oh, really,” she said in a drawl that was meant to grate on him, and it succeeded admirably. “No doubt you’re going to detail all of your relationships for me, so I can see just how available they’ve been for you.”
She sounded like she was grinding rocks between her teeth.
“No,” he said thoughtfully. She was definitely jealous. On the whole, he felt that was a good sign. Too much jealousy could become problematic, though, and would require steps on his part to assure her that he was not a man who believed in multiple partners at any given moment. But a little jealousy, an awareness that he had favored her above all other women, was, on the whole, not a bad thing. “I don’t see that such a discussion has any benefit to us.”
“Good. Because if we had to go into a mutual dissection of our past relationships, I was going to have a hissy fit. The reason my ex-boyfriends are ex is because I don’t want to think about them anymore.”
“Just so,” he agreed amiably.
He stopped suddenly, a horrible, vile, reprehensible thought striking him with the impact of a meteor on the moon.
Gwen had ex-boyfriends. Men she had been intimate with. Worse, men she had probably loved, men to whom she had given her heart and soul and splendid, incredibly sexy body. Who knew how many of them there were out there, smugly living their lives secure in the knowledge that they had once engaged her in a way that was by right his. The fact that she shared porraimos with him proved that they were fated to be together, and yet great big herds of men roamed the earth who had dared to usurp his position.
“Are you growling?” Gwen asked, giving her horse a wide berth in order to come around the front to look at him. “Is something wrong?”
“I am not a vindictive man,” Gregory informed her. “I am calm and sensible and with the exception of that which concerns you, always weigh my options before acting. With that in mind, you will furnish me with the names, locations, birth dates, mothers’ maiden names, and dates concerning all of these former boyfriends. A spreadsheet with pertinent links to related Google Earth and social media entries is preferable, but if necessary I will take notes while you dictate the information to me.”
She stared at him in disbelief for a moment, then began laughing so loudly that her devil horse, laying back his ears, danced an agitated circle around her, the various bundles and baskets attached to the saddle making clanking noises. She held on to his bridle, wiping her eyes once she was able to bring her hilarity into check. “Oh, Gregory, I can’t thank you enough for that laugh. It totally distracted me from how miserably hot I am. A spreadsheet with Google Earth links.” She chuckled to herself as she led the horse forward.
He hesitated, wondering if he should inform her that he wasn’t actually joking, but decided after a moment’s introspection that he would hold off that discussion for a later date.