Eden shook her head again.
Despite the hunger blazing in his eyes, Nevada's mouth kicked up at the left corner. "I didn't think so. You don't sleep with men much, do you?"
For the third time Eden's head moved in a silent negative.
"It's a good thing," he said, bending down to her mouth once more, "that there's more than one way to skin this particular cat."
"What?"
Nevada hesitated, lifted his head enough to see Eden's expression, and asked, "Just how experienced are you, fairy-tale girl?"
She bit her lip and looked at him rather warily. "Are we speaking of practical or intellectual experience?"
"Practical."
"Not much."
"How much is not much?"
"Not. Much."
Nevada whistled softly between his teeth, then said, "You're a virgin, aren't you?"
"That shouldn't matter," Eden said. "Every girl starts out that way."
"My God," was all Nevada could think of to say. He looked at Eden in a combination of disbelief and wonder.
"Don't worry," she said, exasperated. "Virginity isn't contagious."
"I'm not contagious, either," he shot back, "but that's not something you need to worry about."
"I don't understand."
"You're going to stay a virgin."
"But I don't want-"
Nevada kept talking. "You'll be a very experienced sort of virgin, but a virgin just the same."
"What does that mean?"
Nevada's big hands came up, framing Eden's face. He looked from her puzzled hazel eyes to her generous mouth. Her lips were still flushed with the kiss that had taught Nevada more than he thought he had left to learn about men and women and passion. He wondered what else he would learn, what he could teach, what discoveries awaited his exploration of his own private, passionate Eden.
The narrowed green blaze of Nevada's eyes as he watched her mouth made shimmers of sensation curl from Eden's breastbone to her knees. She felt like a tightly furled bud being discovered by the first, searching heat of spring's potent sun.
"Nevada," she whispered. "Aren't you going to kiss me?"
"Do you want to kiss me again?"
"Want?" Eden shivered and laughed softly, almost wildly, wondering how she could make Nevada understand feelings that were so new, so fierce, that she had no names for them. "When I grabbed your wrist to keep you from killing that cowboy in West Fork and you looked at me… you saw me, Nevada, all the way into me, and then you let me stop you, let me see you in return. Nevada," Eden breathed against his lips, standing on tiptoe, "Nevada, I was born for you and you were born for me. I want it all with you, everything, heaven and hell and the rainbow burning between."
With a low sound, Nevada bent and took Eden's mouth, giving her his own in return. When the warmth of her tongue touched his, Nevada's arms tightened, lifting her, bringing her whole body into the embrace. His hips moved slowly against her once, twice, and then he shuddered and eased her down until she was standing on her own feet once more. Holding her tightly, fighting to control his wild response, Nevada tried to end the kiss, but the pleasure of sliding his tongue into Eden's satin sweetness was too great to deny himself.
Just once more. Then I'll stop and catch my breath. Just once…
The hungry, gliding return of Nevada's tongue drew a soft moan from Eden. Slowly he took complete possession of her mouth once more, then began to retreat from her. But she didn't want the kiss to end. She needed more of his taste, his caresses, his elemental male passion. Instinctively her teeth closed on his tongue, silently demanding that he stay within her.
When Eden felt the response that ripped through Nevada at the unexpected caress of her teeth, she would have smiled, but his hands had shifted on her body, finding and stroking her breasts, sending burst after burst of pleasure through her. Her teeth released him as her breath came in with a sound of surprise and passion and she shuddered all the way to her core.
Hard, searching, hungry, Nevada's tongue claimed Eden once more, stroking the sultry softness of her mouth with rhythms of penetration and retreat. His hands moved over her breasts, long fingers stroking, kneading, teasing her until her nipples became a velvet hardness. When he plucked softly at them, the bursts of sensation that had been rippling through Eden merged into hot currents of pleasure that turned her bones to honey.
"Nevada, I can't stand up," Eden said raggedly as she clung to his arms, dizzy with the violence of her own response.
"Don't even try. I can hold you, Eden," Nevada said almost roughly, watching her, feeling her knees sag and at the same time feeling his own strength pouring through his body like a river of fire. "I could hold you in one hand. And I will, but not yet. There are other things I want to do first. A hundred of them. A thousand… oh, God, Eden, what are you doing to me?"
Eden opened her eyes, saw Nevada watching her, and wondered how she had ever thought his eyes bleak or cold. They were hot, burning, as hungry as his kiss had been.
"Put your arms around my neck," Nevada said, moving Eden's hands even as he spoke. "Hold on to me."
His hands moved once more, stroking her from hips to shoulders and back again, pressing her closer and closer to his body until she felt the urgency of his arousal. Her response was an instinctive, supple movement of her hips that dragged a groan from deep within him. His arms tightened, locking their bodies together while he moved against her once, twice, three times, and each time he promised himself it would be the last.
And each time it was not.
"Open your mouth and kiss me," Nevada said hoarsely, bending down to Eden. "I have to be inside you and that's the only way. Kiss me."
Eden gave Nevada what he wanted, needing the urgent joining as much as he did. When the world shifted and spun beneath her feet she simply clung more tightly to him, her arms fierce around his neck. He held her close and hard even after he lowered her to his camp mattress and deepened the hungry melding of mouths. He wanted her with a force that he no longer questioned, for thought was impossible. It was all he could do to control himself.
After a long time Nevada shuddered and slowly, reluctantly, ended the kiss. He lifted his head and let breath hiss out between his teeth. Nothing had ever tempted him the way Eden did at that instant, lying warm and undefended in his arms, wanting him until she trembled with it.
"I should have taken that bath in ice water," Nevada said, his eyes closed and his voice rough with his own arousal. When his eyes opened he looked from Eden's mouth to the pulse beating in her throat and the taut nipples pressing up against the green cotton of her blouse. "But it wouldn't have done any good." "It wouldn't?" Eden asked huskily. "I thought a cold bath always worked."
Nevada shook his head as be bent down to her breasts. "When you throw a bucket of water on a wildfire, all you get is steam."
His teeth closed delicately around one of her nipples, drawing a ragged gasp of surprise from Eden as pleasure streaked through her body, arching her against Nevada in sensual reflex.
"Wildfire," Nevada said thickly, arching into Eden in return. "Clean and beautiful and hotter than hell. Are you going to let me undress you or do you want to play it safe?"
"I'm always safe with you, Nevada. No matter what. I knew that the first time I saw you."
Thick, black lashes swept down, concealing the smoldering green of Nevada's eyes. Eden's hands stroked his hair, his beard, his mustache, and she smiled as she gently kissed him.
"Undress me, Nevada," she whispered, touching the tip of her tongue to his lips. "I've wanted to feel your beard on my skin for so long. I have to… feel you."
His hands moved from Eden's throat to her waist. Cloth fell away, revealing the creamy feminine curves of her breasts. Being bared to the waist was new to her. She blushed until she saw the look in Nevada's eyes. The passion and appreciation in his glance made her forget that she had never given herself in this way before.