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Her breath caught in her throat when she said, “I know.” Emma bit her bottom lip, wondering if Dante would take her words as an invitation to initiate the next move.
“I don’t know about you, but it’s getting pretty damn cold in here. If we want to keep warm all night, we’d better do what it takes.” He removed his hand from her belly and rolled onto his back.
The cold enveloped her immediately and she scooted over to lie on her back as well, tugging the blanket up to her nose.
Dante sat up next to her, tugging the blanket aside, letting even colder air beneath.
“What are you doing?” she said through chattering teeth.
“Getting naked.” His movements indicated he was removing his thermal shirt and stuffing it beneath the covers down near his feet. He slid his long underwear over his hips, his hands bumping into her thigh as he pushed them all the way down to his feet.
“Now your turn.” He reached for the hem of her sweater and dragged it over her head.
“Are you crazy? It’s f-freezing in here.” She tried to keep her turtleneck shirt on, but he was as determined to remove that as he’d been with the sweater.
“Again, we’re adults. If it helps, just think of me as a big electric blanket to wrap around you.” He stuffed her shirt and sweater into the space around her feet and went to work on the long thermal underwear, dragging them down over her legs.
By the time he had her stripped to her bra and panties, she was shaking uncontrollably. “I was w-warmer b-before you s-started,” she said through chattering teeth.
“You’ll be warm again. Come here.” He dragged the blanket over them and pulled her close, crushing her breasts against his chest, his big arms wrapping around her back, tucking the blanket in as close as he could get it.
Their breath mingled, the heat of their skin, touching everywhere but her bra and panties, helped to chase away the chills. But Emma still couldn’t stop shaking. She’d never lain nearly naked with a man. She had trouble breathing and couldn’t figure out where her hands were supposed to be. Planting them against his chest was putting too much space between them and allowing cold air to keep her front chilled. She tried moving them down to her side, but her fingers were cold and she wanted them warm. When she slipped them around to her belly, they bumped against a hot, stiff shaft.
As soon as she touched it, she realized it was his member and before she could think, her hands wrapped around it.
“Baby, only go there if you mean it,” he warned her. “As close and naked as we are, it wouldn’t take much to set me off.”
“I thought you were just an electric blanket,” she whispered, reveling in a surge of power rolling through her. She had caused him to be this way. Her body against his was making him desire her in a way she’d only dreamed about.
For a moment, all her awkward insecurities disappeared. Her fingers tightened around him and slid downward to the base of his shaft.
His arms squeezed around her and his hips rocked, pressing himself into her grip.
Blood hummed through her veins. For that moment, she forgot the chill in the air and the fact they could freeze to death. Her focus centered on what she had in her hands and, in connection, what it could lead to.
Dante moaned. “Do you know what you’re doing to me?”
“I think so,” she responded. Her hand glided up his shaft to the velvety tip, her core heating, liquid fire swirling at her center, readying her to take him.
“I didn’t get us naked in order to take advantage of you.”
Her hands froze. “Am I taking advantage of you?”
“Oh, hell no.”
Her finger swirled across the tip, memorizing him by touch. “Just say so and I’ll stop,” she repeated his words.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” He ran his hands over her back and down to smooth over her bottom.
She laughed, emboldened by the complete darkness. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” Something about the anonymity of the dark gave her the confidence to continue. Then she hesitated. “Unless you don’t want to. You’re the injured party.”
“I’ve wanted this since I stole that kiss.” He hooked the elastic of her panties and slid them down her legs.
She kicked them off, loving the way his member pressed into her curly mound. Just a little lower and he’d be there.
“I don’t have protection,” he said.
“I’m clean of STDs if that’s what you’re saying.” How could she not be when she’d never made love to a man?
“So am I.” He nuzzled her neck, his lips pressing against her pounding pulse. “But we shouldn’t do this without protection.”
“Can’t you withdraw at the last minute?”
“Withdrawal isn’t one-hundred percent safe.”
“You can’t stop now.” Surely she couldn’t get pregnant on her first time. Her first time. Wow. With a man as gorgeous and gentle as Dante, maybe she’d finally overcome her awkward shyness. She trembled, her body shaking like an engine when it first starts.
“Are we going to do it?” she asked, her hand tugging on him, guiding him to her center.
He chuckled softly. “Say the word.”
She inhaled and let out the single word on a breath of air, “Please.”
Dante hesitated for less than a second, and then he rolled on top of her, nudged her legs apart with his knees and settled between her thighs, his member pressing to her opening.
But he didn’t enter, not immediately. He started with a kiss. One similar to the one he’d stolen at the stove. This time, Emma kissed him back, finding his tongue and sliding hers along the length of his. She curled her fingers around the back of his neck and dragged him closer, loving the feel of his smooth chest against her fingers. She reached behind her and unclasped her bra, wanting her naked breasts to feel what her fingers had the pleasure of.
Dante tore it away and slid it beneath her pillow, then he pulled the blanket over their heads and moved down her body. Inch by inch, he tasted her with his tongue, nipping her with his teeth, settling first on one breast, sucking the tip into his mouth and rolling the tight bud around. He moved to the other and gave it equal attention before he inched lower, skimming across her ribs and down past her belly button to the tuft of hair at the apex of her thighs.
Emma held her breath, wondering what he would do next. His mouth so close to home, she couldn’t move, frozen to the sheets, waiting.
With his big, rough fingers, he parted her folds and stroked that sensitive strip of skin.
“Oh, my!” she exclaimed, her heels digging into the mattress, raising her hips for more.
He swirled, tapped and flicked, setting her world on fire. When she thought she couldn’t take any more, he moved up her body, and pressed into her.
At the barrier of her virginity, he paused.
Emma wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her heels into his buttocks, urging him deeper. “Don’t stop,” she pleaded.
“But...”
“Just do it. Please.” She tightened her legs.
He thrust deeper, tearing through.
She must have gasped, because he pulled back a little.
“Are you all right?” Dante asked.
She laughed shakily. “I’d be better if you didn’t stop.”
After hesitating a moment longer, he slid slowly into her and began a steady, easy glide in and out.
The initial pain lasted but a moment, and soon Emma forgot it in the joy of the connection between them. So this was what all the fuss was about. Now she understood and dropped her feet to the mattress to better meet him thrust for thrust.
When Dante stiffened, he stopped, his hard member buried deep inside her. A moment later, he dragged himself free and lay down beside her, pulling her into the warmth of his arms.
The heat of his body and the haze of pleasurable exhaustion washed over her and she melted against him. “Mmm. I never knew it would be that good.”
He lay with his arms around her, his body stiff. “You cried out. Why?”
Heat rose into her cheeks. “Did I?”
For a long moment, Dante held her without talking. “You were a virgin, weren’t you?” When she refused to answer, he continued, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Emma rested her hand on his chest, feeling the swift beat of his heart against her palm. “I was embarrassed. Besides, what difference does it make?”
“We wouldn’t have done it.” He smoothed a hand along her lower back.
“Are you sorry you did?” she asked, her lips so close to his nipple, she tongued the hard little point, liking the way it beaded even tighter.
“No.”
She smiled in the darkness and relaxed against him. “Me, either. Virginity is way overrated.”
He tipped her chin up with his finger. “Then why are—were—you still one?” His breath warmed her.
“Like I told you. I’m not good at relationships. I could never get past a first date.”
She could feel his head shaking side to side. “Inconceivable,” he said, then captured her mouth with his.
When he broke the kiss, Emma lay in his arms, basking in the afterglow, their bodies generating enough combined heat that, along with the cocoon of blankets, they held off the cold.
“Just so you know, I’m not good at relationships, either,” Dante said into the darkness. “I can offer you no guarantees.”
“I understand.” The warmth she’d been feeling chilled slightly. What did she expect? Sex was sex. No matter how good it felt, it didn’t necessarily come with emotional commitment.
She couldn’t expect Dante to fall in love with her just because she’d given him her virginity. “Don’t worry. I won’t stalk you or make any demands of you. The ‘no guarantees’ thing goes both ways.”
His hand paused the circular motion he’d begun on her naked back.
She added to boost her own self-confidence, “Thank you for getting me over my awkwardness. I won’t be so hesitant with my future dates.” As soon as she said the words, she could have kicked herself. Would he consider them flippant and insensitive, or worse? Would he think she was loose and easy with her body?
Despite his announcement that he’d give no guarantees, she’d harbored a wish, a dream and a raging desire to repeat what had just happened. When the storm cleared and they made it back to civilization, she hoped he’d ask her out again. Though sex with Dante had been magical to her, he certainly wouldn’t be impressed enough for a repeat performance with an awkward ex-virgin?
Chapter Four (#ulink_84085290-090b-511b-a71c-27d36a0bbeb3)
Dante pressed himself as close as he could get to the jagged hulk of his crashed helicopter; his copilot lay at an awkward angle, still strapped to his seat, dead from a broken neck sustained upon impact. He didn’t recognize the copilot, his face was hidden in shadows.
A movement at the edge of the village where he’d crashed caught Dante’s eye. The flap of a dark robe fluttered in the desert breeze. There. The man he’d seen at the last minute, pointing an RPG at him, stood at the corner of a mud hut.
Staying low behind the metal wreckage, Dante leveled his 9 mm pistol, aiming at the man, waiting for him to step out of the shadows and come within range.
The sound of an engine made his blood run cold. An old, rusty truck rumbled down the middle of the street between the buildings, loaded with Taliban soldiers wielding Soviet-made rifles.
Alone, without any backup, it was him with a full clip against the Taliban. If he wanted to live, he had to make every shot count.
The truck barreled toward him and stopped short. The soldiers leaped over the side. He fired, hitting one, then another, but they kept coming as if the truck had an endless supply. One by one, he fired until the trigger clicked and the clip was empty.
Taliban men grabbed his arms and pulled him from the wreckage, shouting and shooting their weapons in the air. The hum of the truck engine growled louder as they dragged him closer.
“Dante.”
How did they know his name? He struggled against their hold, kicking and shoving at their hands.
“Dante, wake up!”
He opened his eyes. The sand and desert disappeared and dim light seeped in around the blinds over a window.
“Dante?” a soft feminine voice called out and it all came back to him.
“Emma?” he said, his voice hoarse.
She leaned over him, her naked body pressed against his, her breasts smashed to his chest, her thigh draped over his. She smelled of roses mixed with the musky scent of sex.
It took him a moment to shake the terror of being captured and dragged away by the Taliban, and even longer to return to the camp trailer on the North Dakota tundra.
Then he noticed a red mark on Emma’s cheek. “What happened to you?” He reached up to gently brush his thumb around the mark.
She smiled crookedly. “You were having a bad dream.”
“I did that?” His chest tightened and he pushed to a sitting position. “Oh, Emma, I’m so sorry.”
“It doesn’t hurt.” She pressed her fingers to the red welt. “I’m more worried about the engine noise I hear outside.”
Dante sat still and silent, focusing on the noise from outside. Just as she’d said, an engine revved nearby.
Dante threw back the covers. “Get up. Get dressed.”
“Why?” She asked, scrambling off the bed, gooseflesh rising on her naked skin.
“We don’t know if the man who shot me down yesterday is back.”
“Damn.” Emma grabbed her sweater, tugged it over her naked breasts and slipped into her snow pants and boots.
Dante only had his thermals to pull on and his boots.
