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It took several minutes, but he came back with her robe toasty warm from the clothes dryer, and she shuddered with pleasure as he wrapped it around her. He had taken the time to almost dress, too; he had on socks, unsnapped jeans and a flannel shirt left unbuttoned. He had brought socks for her, and he knelt to slip them on her feet.
He kept his arm around her waist as they went into the kitchen. He pulled out a chair and placed her in it. “Open your mouth,” he said, and when she did he slid the thermometer, which he’d brought from the upstairs bathroom, under her tongue. “Now sit there and be still while I make a pot of coffee.”
That wasn’t hard to do. The only thing she wanted to do more than sit still was to lie down.
When the digital thermometer twittered its alarm, he pulled it out of her mouth and frowned at it. “Ninety six point four. I want it up at least another degree.”
“What about you?”
“I’m more alert than you are. I’m bigger, and I wasn’t in the water as long.” He could still feel a deep inner chill, but nothing like the bone-numbing cold he had felt before. The first cup of coffee almost completely dispelled the rest of the coldness, as both the heat and the caffeine did their work. He made Madelyn drink three cups of coffee, even though she had revived enough to caustically point out that, as usual, he’d made it so strong she was likely to go into caffeine overdose. He watered it down for her, his mouth wry.
When he felt safer about leaving her, he deposited her on the quilts in front of the fire. “I have to go back out,” he said, and he saw panic flare in her eyes. “Not to the range,” he added quickly. “I have to put the horse back in the barn and take care of him. I’ll be back as soon as I’m finished.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she reassured him.
She was still afraid to lie down and go to sleep, even though so much caffeine was humming through her system that she wasn’t certain she would be able to go to sleep that night. She pulled the towel off her head and began combing the tangles out of her hair.
By the time he got back, her hair was dry and she was brushing it into order. He stopped in the doorway, struck as always by the intensely female beauty of the ritual. Her sleeves dropped away from her arms as she lifted them, revealing pale, slender forearms. Her neck was gracefully bent, like a flower nodding in the breeze. His throat tightened, and blood rushed to his loins as he watched her; seven months of marriage and he was still reacting to her like a stallion scenting a mare.
“How are you feeling?” The words were raspy. He had to force them out.
She looked up, her slow smile heating his blood even more. “Better. Warm and awake. How are you after going back out into the cold?”
“I’m okay.” More than okay. They were both alive, and there wasn’t a cell in his body that was cold.
He insisted on taking her temperature again and waited impatiently until the thermometer twittered. “Ninety-seven point six. Good.”
“My normal temperature isn’t much more than that. It usually hovers in the low ninety-eights.”
“Mine is usually around ninety-nine or a little higher.”
“I’m not surprised. Sleeping with you is like sleeping with a furnace.”
“Complaining?”
She shook her head. “Bragging.” Her smile faded, and her gray eyes darkened to charcoal as she reached out to touch his face. “I almost lost you.” He saw the flash of sheer terror in her eyes just before she closed them, and he grabbed her to him with almost desperate relief.
“Baby, I came a lot closer to losing you than you did to losing me,” he said roughly, moving his lips against her hair.
Madelyn wound her arms around his neck. She didn’t often cry; her moods were too even and generally upbeat. The two times she had cried since their marriage had both been the result of pain, once on their wedding night and again just an hour before when the warm water in the tub had begun bringing life back into her frozen skin. But suddenly the enormity and strain of what they had been through swept over her, and her chest tightened. She tried to fight it, tried to keep her composure, but it was a losing battle. With a wrenching sob she buried her face against his throat and clung to him while her body shook with the force of her weeping.
He was more than surprised by her sudden tears, he was astounded. His Maddie was a fighter, one who met his strength with her own and didn’t flinch even from his worst tempers. But now she was sobbing as if she would never stop, and the depth of her distress punched him in the chest. He crooned to her and rubbed her back, whispering reassurances as he lowered her to the quilts.
It took a long time for her sobs to quiet. He didn’t try to get her to stop, sensing that she needed the release, just as he had needed the release of savagely kicking a feed bucket the length of the barn after he had taken care of his horse. He just held her until the storm was over, then gave her his handkerchief for mopping up.
Her eyelids were swollen, and she looked exhausted, but there was no more tightly wound tension in her eyes as she lay quietly in the aftermath. Reese propped himself up on an elbow and tugged at the belt of her robe, pulling it loose and then spreading the lapels to expose her nude body.
He trailed his fingers across the hollow of her throat, then over to her slender collarbone. “Have I ever told you,” he asked musingly, “that just looking at you gets me so hard it hurts?”
Her voice was husky. “No, but you’ve demonstrated it a few times.”
“It does hurt. I feel like I’m going to explode. Then, when I get inside you, the hurt changes to pleasure.” He stroked his hand down to her breast, covering it with the warmth of his palm and feeling her nipple softly pushing at him. Gently he caressed her, circling the nipple with his thumb until it stood upright and darkened in color; then he bent over her to kiss the enticing little nub. Her breathing had changed, getting deeper, and a delicate flush was warming her skin. When he looked up he saw how heavy-lidded her eyes had become, and he was flooded with fiercely masculine satisfaction that he could make her look like that.
Once he had tried to deny himself the sensual pleasure of feasting on her, but no longer. He let himself be absorbed as he stroked his hand down her body, savoring the silky texture of her skin, shaping his hand to the curves and indentations that flowed from one to the other, the swell of her breast to the flat of her stomach, the flare of her hips, the notch between her legs. He watched his tanned, powerful fingers slide through the little triangle of curls and then probe between her soft folds, fascinated by the contrast between his hand and her pale feminine body.
And the taste of her. There was the heated sweetness of her mouth; he sampled it, then tasted again more deeply, making love to her with his tongue. Then there was the warm, fragrant hollow of her throat, and the rose-and-milk taste of her breasts. He lingered there for a long time, until her hands were knotting and twisting in the quilt, and her hips were lifting against him.
Her belly was cool against his lips, and silky smooth. Her tight little navel invited exploration, and he circled it with his tongue. Her hands moved into his hair and tightly pressed against his skull as he moved downward, parting her thighs and draping them over his shoulders.
