They clutched each other and rolled on the bed together, their mouths eating at all the bare flesh they could find, hands seeming to multiply, for they were everywhere. Blair had images running through her head of all the times she’d seen Leander and wanted to touch him. She remembered his hands tying delicate knots in surgery, and she’d wanted those hands to touch her. There were times when she’d watched him walk, and she’d thought of his body moving on top of hers. Now, she ran her hands down his back and over his buttocks, so firm and small and beginning to move in a way that made her sure that she was on fire.

He seemed to sense when she was ready, and when he entered her, she gave a little scream and Lee’s mouth came down on hers, and she drew on it hungrily.

His movements became rapid and she matched his speed with her own, clinging to him with her hands, mouth, legs. And when he began to move harder and faster, she stiffened, lifting her hips to his, allowing him more access to her body.

And when they finished, Blair again screamed and her body jerked into a spasm of passion as Lee collapsed onto her. Minutes later, Blair relaxed, and for a moment, her body trembled as she clung to him, keeping her legs tight about his waist, determined to never let him go.

They lay together for several minutes before Blair began to relax and released the death hold she had on Lee.

She caressed the damp curls about his neck, running her fingers over the muscles in his shoulders, feeling his skin. He was so new to her, yet, in a way, it was as if they’d always been together. There was so much about him that she didn’t know, so much that she wanted to learn.

He raised himself on one elbow and looked at her. “Down-stair’s I have a hip bath and water heating in the fireplace. Like a bath?”

For a moment, she looked at him, in the light from behind his head, and she realized how precious that head had become to her. Was it just her idea or was he actually the best-looking man in the world?

“Keep looking at me like that and you won’t get a bath before next Tuesday.”

Lee lifted one eyebrow at Blair’s mischievous smile, wrapped her in a blanket and carried her downstairs to the first floor. One end of the cabin was dominated by an enormous stone fireplace flanked by two large windows. The other end contained a kitchen that was littered with dirty dishes, the survivors of Lee’s cooking binge. The long walls were stone to about three feet, logs above that, with several windows here and there.

Before the fireplace was a tin tub, taller at one end than the other, now full of cold water that Lee said was from the nearby stream. As Blair stood there, feeling somewhat shy, Lee poured hot water into the tub and then led her toward it. When she still just stood there, he pulled the blanket from her and set her into the water.

The water felt heavenly and she leaned back against the tub and let herself relax. She was aware of Lee standing over her and watching. He’d put on his trousers, but he was shirtless—and stunning: all that dark skin of his stretched over muscles hard from a life spent mostly out-of-doors.

“I married the boy next door,” she murmured, smiling.

He knelt at the foot of the tub. “Why did you try to make my life miserable when we were children?”

“I didn’t do any such thing,” she said, as she began to wash her arms.

“What do you call mud in my face, snowballs flying at me from nowhere, and the time you told Mary Alice Pendergast I was in love with her? Her mother showed my mother love notes that were supposedly from me.”

“Because you were taking Houston,” she said softly. “She was my twin, but suddenly you were there and she seemed to like you more than me.”

When Lee didn’t say anything, she looked up to see Ms eyes piercing into hers. He didn’t seem to believe her. She hadn’t thought of that time when they were children for years. She had hated him, hated him from the first moment she saw him. But why? Everyone else seemed to like him, and Houston adored him, but she couldn’t stand being near him. She used to leave a room when he entered.

“Maybe…,” she whispered.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe I wanted to be your friend.”

“But you couldn’t, since Houston’d already put her brand on me?” He lifted her foot from the tub, took the soap and began washing her, his long fingers sliding far, far up her leg.

“You sound as if you weren’t involved, but you did ask her to marry you. You must have loved her.” Blair watched his h

ands, felt his hands.

He began to soap her toes. “I guess I asked her to marry me. Sometimes, I don’t seem to remember having said those words to anyone. I think it was a passage of manhood. Every man in Chandler asked Houston to marry him.”

“Did they?” Blair asked with interest. “Houston never said a word about anything like that. Only Alan asked me to marry him. All the other men were—.”

“Fools,” he said quickly, washing her foot with great care.

“But I’m so different,” she said, and in spite of everything she could do, tears began to form in her eyes. “I’ve always tried to be like other women, someone like Houston, soft and gentle, but instead I had to become a doctor. And then, I received higher grades than all the other students, male or female, and I could see the men’s eyes change when they looked at me. And—.”

“You could stand a little work on your suturing,” he said, as he dropped her leg and took her right foot into his hands.

“And whenever I beat a man at anything, he—.” Her eyes widened. “What?”

Tags: Jude Deveraux Montgomery/Taggert Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net