Mountain Song by Ruby Laska Page A

that’s all he ever dreamed of.”
    Claudia saw the naked
sadness on Andy’s face, and without thinking reached a hand to comfort, to
soften the lines around his weary eyes.
    She traced the network
of lines down to the deep furrows around his mouth, lines she remembered well
from concentration, from a focus so intense Andy was able to shut out the rest
of the world. The sharp stubble of his beard under her fingers contrasted with
the smooth warmth of his skin, igniting a response in the sensitive nerves that
started in her fingertips and traveled to the rest of her body. Without
thinking, she continued her exploration to his lips, soft and warm, parting at
her touch so that she slid one finger along the edge of his mouth.
    And then his hand shot
out and gripped her arm, locked with the strength of iron.
    When his voice came,
it was coarse, thick with heat. “Don’t play with me,” he warned, “unless you’re
ready to see this through until the end.”
    Claudia heard. She
heard and then, without thinking, she plunged ahead.
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    Andy resisted.
    As Claudia let her
fingertips trail down the side of his face, he inhaled the faint scent of her
perfume, some trace left on her wrist. He’d always loved her perfume, one he’d
never detected on any other woman. It was deep and rich and spicy, not at all
girlish, more pine and moss than flowers. She used to stand barefoot in her
simple white bra and panties in the cold of the morning, taking her time,
tracing the crystal stopper of the tiny vial of perfume along her pulse points:
throat, wrists, between her breasts.
    And sometimes she’d
pause in her private ritual and lift her eyes to him, a smoldering challenge as
he turned away from his desk across the room and watched, and trace the crystal
down the flat plane of her stomach, dip it to the inside of her pale thighs. Then
Andy would know the books would have to wait that day.
    Claudia had been new
to lovemaking the first time she’d shared his bed. But God, she was a quick
study, somehow innocent and wicked at the same time.
    And now she was
tracing a single index finger along his jaw, down past his collarbones,
slipping under the collar of his shirt, looking at him expectantly. Her lips
were parted slightly and her breathing quickened.
    He’d warned her, but
she’d taken no heed. Reckless Claudia, always taking chances with everyone’s
lives, even her own. No thought to the consequences, to the devastating effects
her actions might have—
    Andy seized her
exploring fingers, crushing them roughly in his own hand, and glared at
Claudia.
    “You had better be
damn sure this is what you want,” he muttered. But she met his gaze, with a
look that was hungry and expectant and not the least bit intimidated.
    And so he stopped
resisting.
    Slowly he lifted her
fingers to his lips, kissing them softly. The feather light brush of his mouth
on her knuckles was almost unbearably delicate, especially when he turned her
hand and trailed his kiss up her wrist, up her arm to the crook of the elbow,
and then slowly back down.
    When he returned to
her fingers, he slid one briefly into his mouth. His mouth was warm, his tongue
velvet, and the heat coiling in her core bloomed and traveled through her body.
    “Kiss me, please,
Andy,” she pleaded, holding her breath as he closed the distance between them
on the couch. In one swift and fluid motion he lifted her legs at the knees and
repositioned them so she was reclining against the pile of old down pillows. He
lowered his lips to hers, meeting her hunger with his own.
    She’d expected him to
be rough, but his touch was soft, his tongue tracing a slow path along her lip
before meeting her own. She opened herself to him, twining her fingers into his
hair, pulling him closer to deepen the kiss. At her urging he finally tasted
her, plunging his tongue into the reaches of her mouth with a rhythm that
entered her body and translated itself into the press of her