“And now?”
“Now? Now I just feel like a freak.”
She sat up, curling her legs against his and holding the blanket loosely around her shoulders, a questioning look in her eyes. “You feel like a freak because you had cancer?”
“No, I feel like a freak because—” He couldn’t say it. Yes, he could. Just spit it out. “Because I lost a testicle.”
He could still hear his father’s military-honed, football-coach voice pinging off the inside of his skull. “Get it together, son. I won’t accept anything less than perfection! You ain’t perfect, you ain’t nothin’!”
Sean had grown up under the former drill sergeant’s inflexible thumb, had been raised to believe that in any aspect of life, from sports to relationships, if you weren’t perfect, you were a failure. His dad had been puffed up with pride at his only son’s accomplishments—until the diagnosis that forced Sean to withdraw from the US Ski Team in order to undergo life-saving surgery and radiation treatments.
For some reason, his father had taken the entire situation as a personal affront, as if Sean had intentionally contracted cancer just to annoy him. “You let me down, boy. Our shot at gold is gone, and how are you going to have a kid now to pass on your ability? Gone forever.”
Logically Sean knew his dad’s words were meaningless; it wasn’t his fault he’d gotten cancer, and doctors had since assured him that he could most likely still father children, but years of having the idea of perfection drilled into his head had messed with his self-esteem.
“Sean?”
He blinked, realizing he’d been somewhere much less pleasant than where he was right now with Robyn. “Sorry. I drifted.”
Lips pressed together, her expression thoughtful, she looked down into the puddle of blanket in her lap. “Did you consider an implant? They have those, don’t they?”
Nodding, he reached out and rubbed his palm over her knee. “I had one. My body rejected it a couple of months later, and I was back to being a freak.”
“Look,” she began softly, “I can’t know what it feels like to lose what you did, but I do know how it feels to be self-conscious about your body. You aren’t a freak, and I can’t imagine that anyone would think that.”
“Yeah, someone did.”
Jenny. The first woman with whom he’d tried to overcome his anxiety after the surgery. He’d pushed past his fear like he always had, managing to mask his nervousness even when she’d touched him intimately.
Then she’d discovered his defect. She’d recoiled. She’d tried to cover up her reaction, telling him she’d merely been startled. But he’d seen her look of disgust. He’d zipped up and walked out of her hotel room, never looking back, but her expression had haunted him ever since.
Robyn’s hands formed fists around the handfuls of blanket, and possessive anger ignited in her eyes, so intense he almost smiled. “Someone actually called you a freak?”
“She said it was freaky.”
The anger faded, and color returned to her knuckles. “Freaky. Is that all she said? Was she insulting?”
“That wasn’t insulting enough?”
“I’m sure it seemed that way at the time.”
He sputtered at that. “At the time?”
“Sean, listen. Trust me on this.” She reached out to take his hand, and it was all he could do not to jerk it away. “She wasn’t making fun of you. You were feeling exposed. Hypersensitive. I know. I’ve made the same mistakes.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re an expert in losing a nut.”
She winced, stung, and he regretted his show of temper, his sullen remark she didn’t deserve. “I can’t relate to that, but I can relate to being self-conscious and scared.” She bit her bottom lip, torturing it until he thought it would bleed, and then she blurted, “I used to be really fat and ugly.”
Only the expression on her face, the very real pain etched into the creases on her brow, stayed his skeptical laughter—or his furious curse. He’d dated women who’d sworn an extra pound meant obesity, that a few freckles rendered them fit for the kennels. Robyn hadn’t struck him as one of them, and even now, while he couldn’t believe she’d ever been overweight and ugly, he saw that she believed it.
“Go on,” he urged, giving her hand an encouraging squeeze.
“I was so paranoid that if I overheard someone saying anything that might be even remotely construed as rude, I flipped out. Once, I overheard someone say the word ‘cow’ and I started crying. Turned out they were talking about a farm project.”
She brought his hand up to her lips, where she pressed a gentle kiss into his palm. “My point is that what you took as an insult might not have been. In any case”—she gave him a long, appraising look—“you have nothing, I repeat nothing, to be worried about.”
Desire slammed into him. Man, pathetic what two years of celibacy and a heated gaze from a beautiful woman could do to a guy. “Given the predatory look on your face, I’m thinking I do have something to worry about.”
A wanton smile touched her lips, and she stretched with a slow, feline grace, causing the blanket to slip off her shoulders and pool around her perfect, plump bottom. While he tried to catch his breath, she spread his legs and kneeled between them, her hands on his knees. Still smiling and looking into his eyes with a smoky gaze, she ran her hands up his thighs until she reached his hips. Blood pounded in his ears, nearly drowning out the sound of his raspy breathing.
She traced a pattern of who-cared-what over the tight muscles of his abdomen, her hand occasionally brushing his rock-hard erection. Each time, he nearly jumped right out of his skin, and each time, her smile widened.
“Still worried?” She circled the tip of one finger around the swollen head of his cock.
“More than ever,” he choked out.
Need swirled in his belly, spinning faster and faster with each teasing stroke of her finger. Then her hand went lower, delved between his legs. He stiffened, grabbed her wrist and drew it away.
Her gaze softened, brimmed with emotion and understanding. “Please. Trust me.”
The hand holding her wrist shook no matter how hard he tried to control the spastic trembling. She was asking so much of him, too much, and nothing, not even the time he’d been caught in an avalanche, had terrified him as considerably as what she wanted him to do.
He swore as if harsh words could chase away the mind-numbing terror, and then, taking a deep breath, he released her. Surprisingly, she didn’t move her hand from where he’d lifted it to his thigh. Instead, she bent forward and kissed his navel, her soft lips bringing him back to the place where fear was not welcome.
Her breasts brushed his thighs as her silky hair brushed his now straining erection, and sparks of electricity charged through his bloodstream. She kissed a path lower, letting her cheek caress what her hair had only teased. A sweet, feathery sensation skated over his skin, and he had to concentrate on keeping his thoughts rational.
She grasped his shaft, stroked lightly. Her hand moved lower, and a moan caught in his throat. Lower. He resisted the urge to push her away. Lower, and her fingers found what they sought, and he went rigid, his hands clenched so tightly they hurt.
Robyn didn’t stop kissing his abdomen as she fondled him, and when she took the head of his penis between her wet lips, he almost forgot what her hand was doing there between his legs.
“You taste good, Sean,” she whispered in a sultry voice that nearly made him lose it right then and there, “and you feel good.”
She gave his testicle a gentle squeeze for emphasis, and sharp bursts of pleasure speared through him. And then she put her mouth there, kissing and blowing warm caresses that brought his hips off the floor.
He unclenched his fists and drove his fingers into her hair, holding on for dear life as she sucked his sac into her mouth, laved it with her tongue. Her fingertips stroked the tender strip of skin behind his scrotum, each pass sending shocks of pleasure through his flesh and into every cell un
til the sensation centered in his swollen cock.
He moaned as she licked a trail back up, along the seam of his shaft to the head, where a drop of precome had formed. The warm, wet heat of her mouth had him writhing, his thighs shaking as she lapped up the creamy bead. She continued to taste him, dragging the flat of her tongue up his abdomen to his chest, his neck, and finally, as she settled her opening over him, his lips.
“Got another condom?” She swiped his bottom lip with her tongue as she hovered above him.
“Shit. No.”
“I’m on the pill…haven’t been with anyone since my last checkup…”
He gripped her waist, dying to pull her down and bury himself in that hot, sweet place between her thighs. “I’m clean. It’s been two years and my job requires testing every six months—”
He didn’t have a chance to finish before, eyes closed, she kissed him with hungry, punishing kisses and guided him inside her slippery sex. He wished he knew what emotions lurked behind those delicate eyelids, but as her warmth and slick passage surrounded him, he let his curiosity go, hoping only that she could feel what she meant to him.
Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she raised and lowered her hips, sometimes deliciously fast and furious, sometimes so agonizingly slow that she barely moved. He let her set the pace, but twice he had to crunch his teeth together to the point of pain in order to keep completion at bay.
The wicker couch bit into his back, but he welcomed the discomfort, used it as a focus when clenching his teeth or biting his tongue started to fail. Robyn wrenched her lips away from his and sat back on his thighs, her eyes open now and glazed with fierce desire. Her hair, well mussed by his fingers, glowed by the light of fire. Man, he’d never seen anything so wild, so sexy, so perfectly made for him.
He lifted his hands from her rocking hips to her breasts, stroking them, eliciting gasps from her when he lightly pinched her tight, hard nipples. The flickering firelight cast deep shadows between her breasts and made the sprinkling of freckles across the swells more prominent, made it more tempting for him to want to count every single one, to know her so thoroughly that he’d be aware the moment a new one appeared.
“I love the sounds you make,” he said raggedly. “You are so hot. And tight. Sweetheart, you’re killing me.”
She smiled and threw her head back, closing her eyes and increasing her pace. Unable to take more of her torture, he dropped a hand to her mound and slipped a thumb into her cleft, finding the sweet bundle of nerves he’d loved with his mouth earlier. She bucked, clenching around him, and the game was over.
She came loudly, grinding against him and forcing his own fantastic, powerful release. He grasped her hips and drove upward as the orgasm ripped through him. Red flashes burst behind his eyes, and he felt a rush he never thought to experience anyplace but on skis. Jesus, what this woman did him was a one of a kind microbrew experience compared to the cheap, mass-produced quality of past pleasures.
Completely and thoroughly spent, his body trembling, he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her.
“So,” she purred, “was that so bad?”
He would have laughed if he’d had the energy or breath. “Baby, I’m cured.”
Chapter Eleven
The smell of pancakes infiltrated Robyn’s dreams. She came awake to the blurry sight of Sean flipping a burned pancake in a cast-iron skillet over the fire. He shot her a grin over his shoulder.
“Morning. Found some paper plates and flapjack mix in a cabinet. I hope you’re hungry, and I mean hungry, because you’ll need to be starving to eat these things.”
The bear fur tickled her skin as she stretched and quickly tucked her arms back under the warm blanket they’d slept beneath. The cabin had a bedroom with two bunk beds and a cot, but with no electricity, they’d have frozen if they hadn’t slept in the room with the fireplace. Besides, this way they could sleep together.
“Believe me,” she said on a yawn, “they can’t be nearly as bad as the stuff my dad used to make us eat on camping trips.”
“Uh-huh. You haven’t tasted these bad boys yet. Emphasis on bad.”
She laughed and blinked away the sleep in her eyes so she could better take in the man crouched on his heels before the fire in his jeans and snug shirt. No way would she ever tire of looking at him. Or touching him. Or making love—no, having sex with him.
Love. Not even close. She had no business pairing that word with what she and Sean had, which amounted to a fling with great sex. Out-of-this-world great sex.
But there had also been an intensely emotional connection in what they’d done last night. She’d shared intimate details of her past with him—she never told any man how overweight she’d been—and he’d confided a secret so deep and personal that the risk he’d taken pierced her soul.
His confession hadn’t shocked her, but it had blown a hole in her defenses. Two years. He’d gone two years without sex because the loss of a testicle had ravaged his self-esteem. And for some reason, he’d decided to bring her into his tight circle of those who knew the true reason for both his celibacy and his withdrawal from the world of competitive skiing.
He’d wanted for her to be the one with whom he tried to push past his feelings of inadequacy. But why her? And now that he was “cured”, as he claimed, what was to stop him from taking up with hot groupies and willing divorcees again?
She burrowed deeper into the blanket, unsure if she truly wanted to know the answers to her questions. She had too much going on in her life right now to have to deal with Sean’s motivations. And even if she didn’t have job and reunion issues…oh, crap.
Levering into a sitting position, she glanced frantically around the room for a clock. She didn’t care that the blanket slipped down to her waist, exposing her breasts to the chilly air.
“Sean! What time is it?”
He slid two pancakes from the pan onto two paper plates and glanced at his watch. “Eleven-oh-six.”
“Oh, no.” She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the cold and hurriedly grabbing up her clothes, which were scattered all over the cabin. “I have to go. I have to get to a phone.” She stepped into her thong, thankful that the flimsy fabric had withstood Sean’s enthusiasm. Where was her bra?
“Ahem.” He still crouched there by the fire, the plates at his feet, his grin cocky and his finger twirling said bra. “Looking for this?”
Glaring, she snatched it from him. “Hurry up. We have to go.”
He shook his head and held out a plate and a bottle of what looked like ancient maple syrup. “We aren’t going anywhere. Not until the storm passes. I even called patrol, and they can’t help us get out of here until there’s a break in the weather.”
She stepped into her jeans and grabbed her ski pants. “We can’t wait for your buddies. I have to make a call before noon or I lose a job and an auction emcee.”
He cursed, finally realizing the seriousness of her predicament. “Robyn, we can’t get out. It isn’t that we shouldn’t. We can’t.”
Her heart gave a giant thump and her stomach knotted. “Of course we can. We just ski out of here—”
“It’s too dangerous. By the time the storm is done, we may even need help to dig out.”
Refusing to believe him, she rushed to the door and yanked it open, only to find a wall of snow four feet high, and above that, a white veil of blowing snow trying to fight its way in. A few lumps fell inside and broke apart over her bare feet. Her stunned brain barely registered the stinging cold.
Oh, no. Oh, God, no. This couldn’t be happening. Maybe they could climb up and over…
She attacked the snow, shoved her hands into the solid pack in an attempt to scoop handfuls aside. She’d dig out with her fingernails if she had to.
“Robyn.” Strong arms closed around her from behind. “Baby, stop.”
She ignored him, continued to drag chunks of snow down onto her feet. Pain shot up her arms and her fingers burned, but she didn’t care.
She had to get to a phone.
Sean’s arms tightened, steel bands around her as he dragged her away from the door. “You’re hurting yourself.”
“No!” She struggled uselessly against him, cursing the warmth of tears on her cheeks. “We can get out. We can!”
Even as she spoke, she knew he was right, but stopping meant giving up, and giving up meant losing everything she’d hoped for.
“No, we can’t.” His voice, low and gentle against her ear, didn’t soothe her, but it did convince her she was acting like a crazy woman.
Sniffling, she turned into his embrace and clung to him like he was her entire world. Which, as they stood in a musty cabin in the middle of a forest, he was.
“I’m so screwed,” she mumbled into his shirt. “What am I going to do?”
“We’ll handle it.”
His words rumbled deep in his chest, and she felt them against her cheek and in her heart. Great. How was she supposed to stay detached when he said things like that? Things that made her think he liked her for who she was rather than how she looked? Why did he have to be so wonderful?
“No, we won’t handle it. I will.” She wheeled out of his arms and dashed away the moistness in her eyes. “I always do.”
He shut the door and walked back to her, leaving wet footprints on the floor from the dusting of snow that had blown through the doorway. “What if I can help?”
“You can’t.”
“But what if I could?”
Stubborn man. “You can’t.”
She spotted the pancakes where he’d placed them on the table before dragging her away from her panicked attempt to tunnel out of the cabin. Shivering from the cold she’d let in, she plopped down in one of the rickety chairs. She wasn’t hungry, but she needed a distraction. And an excuse not to look at Sean.
“I know people. I could make some calls.”
“I don’t want anyone hiring me as a favor.” She grabbed a fork out of the package of plasticware he’d set out at some point. “I’m good at my job and I’ll find another one based on that.” She took a bite of pancake. “Also,” she said with a grimace, “don’t ever open a breakfast restaurant.”