Her peevishness was a ruse she employed to convince herself that she didn't like feeling his solid presence along her back, touching from shoulders to toes, nor the warm, damp gusts of his breath against her nape.
She tried telling herself that his body was heavy and intrusive, when actually she relished the feel of it against hers. So much so that she reflexively snuggled closer to him.
Her eyes opened wide when she was alarmingly reminded that Judd's sleeping attire had been chosen for maximum comfort and left no doubt that she was in bed with an extremely virile man. Hoping that she wouldn't awaken him, she turned her head slightly.
He snuffled, stirred and opened his eyes. Their faces were very close. Stevie felt as though the bizarre occasion called for something. A thank-you.
A tension-breaking laugh. A reprimand.
She neither said nor did anything, only lay there staring into a rugged, well-lived-in, beard-roughened face that was becoming distressingly dear to her.
When Judd finally moved, it was only to spread wide his fingers against her abdomen and to press it gently with the heel of his hand. Then, moving that hand to the curve of her waist, he slowly drew her onto her back.
His eyes went on a silent tour of her, touching everywhere: her hair, which he was lazily sifting through his fingers, her eyes, her mouth, her throat. He smiled with amusement as they roved down the prim bodice of her girlish nightgown to the satin bow that made it seductive. Gradually his gaze made its way back up to hers.
He moved again, this time to bracket her shoulders with his elbows. He used them to prop himself inches above her. He pressed one of his legs between hers, smooth flesh against rough.
His thigh lay warmly and heavily in her cleft.
He took her face between his hands, sliding his fingers up through her hair and curving them around her head. His thumbs made light passes across her lips. They parted. The point of separation seemed to intrigue him, and he investigated it with the tip of his thumb.
Then he lowered his head and replaced his stroking thumbs with a kiss as soft as the summer rain falling upon the leaves of the trees outside.
Reflexively Stevie's arms went around him.
She splayed her hands over his broad back.
Gaining confidence, she rubbed them up and down, eventually going as far as the dimples in the small of his back.
He released a low, primitive groan and pressed his tongue between her lips. His lips slanted across hers to achieve the best fit and ultimate satisfaction. His tongue probed deeply, master fully, but unhurriedly. It was a tranquil, sleepy, rainy morning kiss.
It was delicious.
When it was over and they pulled apart, they gazed at each other with drowsy complacence.
Strands of her hair had become enmeshed in his stubble. She reached up to pull them away, but he caught the tip of her finger between his teeth and nipped it, then bathed the ball of it with his soft, damp tongue.
She investigated his face with her hands, as one blind, ghosting over the rough, masculine features with curious fingertips. She tried in vain to smooth out the dense eyebrows, though she thought they were incredibly attractive just as they were.
He bent his head and kissed her bare shoulder.
She slipped her arms beneath his again and gave him a hard, urgent hug, wanting to feel his weight pressing down on her again.
He granted her wish, readjusting his body against hers for an even more tantalizing match, then slightly rocking them together. His mouth tenderly ate at hers, giving it kiss after kiss-open, hot, wet and deep.
Slowly, taking it one small button at a time, he unfastened her nightgown. When he got to the satin bow, he raised his head and watched as his fingers pulled on one end of the ribbon until it came free. He moved the cotton aside.
Stevie gauged his reaction with trepidation, but there was nothing glowing in his hazel eyes except admiration and desire. His tanned fingers curved around her paler skin, cupping her breast. His expression grew as soft as the flesh he was gently supporting.
But Stevie didn't see that. By now her eyes were closed, and, between parted lips, her breath rushed in and out on shallow pants. Judd nuzzled the breast he held, rubbing it with his nose, his chin, his lips, lightly scratching it with his bearded cheeks. Stevie murmured with want and need, and responsively pressed her thigh against his, tilting her hips up and forward.
He kissed the very center of her breast, then took it between his lips and drew it into his mouth. After suckling her with tempered fervency, he kissed her raised nipple. He flicked it rapidly and lightly with the tip of his tongue.
Sensations exploded in her belly like holiday sparklers. She gave a glad, wordless cry. Judd pressed her femininity with his knee and made a grinding motion against it. She clutched his back, digging into the hard muscles.
He sent his hand beneath the sheet, beneath the nightgown, beneath the brief silk panties to caress softness and warmth and woman.
That's when they heard the knocking on the door downstairs, urgent knocking that couldn't be ignored.
The first words with which Judd greeted the new day were precise and profane.
He practically tore the front door off the hinges getting it open. A sodden delivery man, wearing a dripping yellow slicker, didn't look any happier to be there than Judd was to have him there.
"Took you long enough," the man complained.
"I was in bed."
"Hope you appreciate me coming all the way out here in this." He indicated the downpour that had made a quagmire of the clearing surrounding the house. Stevie's valiant little plants were lying vanquished in the mud like victims of a sea battle.
'Oh, yeah, I'm thrilled to see you," Judd mumbled sarcastically as he scrawled his signature along the dotted line of the receipt.
The delivery man handed him the plastic-wrapped overnight letter, hunkered deeper into his slicker and ran down the porch steps to his waiting van. Judd slammed the front door.
"Who was it?" 'A delivery for me.''
"From whom?"
In his querulous mood, he hadn't even thought to check. When he read the return address, he cursed. "Mike Ramsey."
"What is it?"
"How the hell do I know? I haven't opened it. yet."
He'd never been this frustrated in his life.
There they'd been, in that cozy, rumpled bed, kissing like crazy, temperatures rising, things progressing nicely, and now this. He could gladly murder Ramsey for unwittingly interrupting.
He was none too pleased to see that Stevie had quickly dressed. Her eyes looked enormous in her wan face, her expression a blend of apprehension and guilt.
Damn! He still had the taste of her mouth and the feel of her breast on his tongue. Even as enraged as he was over the interruption, all he could really think about was resuming where they'd left off.
But instinct told him that it wasn't going to happen. That's why he was so angry. Given a chance to think about it, to reconsider, to let her passions cool, she had backed out.
There was always an outside chance, however, that he was wrong, Judd thought optimistically.
He took a step toward her where she stood poised, as though for flight, on the bottom stair.
He looked at her longingly and spoke her name in a hoarse, aroused voice. "Stevie?"
Wetting her lips nervously, she said, "I'll put on the coffee," and headed toward the kitchen at a pace that could fairly be classified as a run.
Judd waited to follow her until he'd exhausted his repertoire of obscenities. Having spent a majority of his adult life either in a locker room or newsroom, that file cabinet of his vocabulary was extensive.
Wearing only the shorts he'd pulled on before going downstairs to answer the door, he went into the kitchen. Flopping into a chair at the table, he ripped open the cardboard envelope while Stevie stood waiting for the coffee to finish perking.