Instead, she croaked, “What time is it?”
“Sunset.”
She jackknifed up in alarm. “But we were supposed to move out two hours ago!”
“You needed to rest. Now we’ll move faster.” Before she could reprimand him for not sticking to their schedule on account of her alleged delicacy, he ruffled her hair and winked. “Hop to it, my dewy doc.”
She huffed as her heart fired against her ribs. He was suddenly treating her like his kid sister. And it still turned her insides into a mushy mess.
As she began to reach for her clothes, he turned back to her.
He took her undershirt away from a hand gone lax. He pulled it over her head, guided her flaccid arms through it, managing not to drop the blanket from where it covered her breasts. He drew it away only once the undershirt was securely in place.
Just when she thought she might suffer a coronary, his intent and serious expression turned incandescent with a surge of something dark and driven. Then he leaned down, opened his lips over the junction of her neck and shoulder.
The feel of his tongue and teeth there was like being prodded by lightning. She lurched under the force of sensations that thundered through her. Then he made it worse.
He glided to the tip of her shoulder, scraping her flesh with his teeth, gathering the sweat beaded on it with his tongue.
He growled against her skin, sending a string of shock waves through her with every syllable.
She thought he said, “A reward…an incentive…”
Then he pulled back and disappeared into his compartment.
She flopped onto her back, gasping, before she forced herself up and into her clothes. Then she crawled to his side to check his wound before they resumed their grueling trek.
She’d have hours to contemplate the meaning of his words.
And the feelings he’d ripped from her depths.
By the end of the second day, their water supply had dwindled even though they drank only when absolutely necessary. They were losing gallons in this weather and with the exertion.
After midnight they stopped for their hour’s rest.
As she drank, she noticed he didn’t. She stopped, insisting he drink, that he was the one losing the most fluids handling ten times the weight she was. He only insisted on taking her up on her offer of IV fluids.
He hung the saline bag on his jacket so that she wouldn’t have to stand and hold it for him. She protested the inefficiency of this maneuver, and he calmly unrolled a mat from the sled, propped it against the sloping edge of a dune, tossed a few blankets beside it, then caught her hand and pulled her down on it with him.
Before she knew what hit her, Harres was lounging with his back to the dune, his endless legs open with her between them, her hips in their V, her back to his chest, her head on his right shoulder. Then he cocooned them both in the blankets and crossed his arms over her midriff, plastering her to him.
After the first stunned moment, she tried to fidget away.
He tightened his hold, groaned in her ear, “Relax.”
Relax? Was he insane?
And he wasn’t only that, he was rubbing his lips against the top of her head, inhaling her and rumbling enjoyment as he talked. “Rest. Get warm. It’s far colder than yesterday.”
“W-we have enough blankets,” she protested weakly. “We can roll in them separately.”
“This is the best method of body temperature preservation.”
“And to think I reminded you of that!”
His chuckle, reverberating beneath her ear, sent more waves of distress crashing through her. “Conserve your energy, my Talia. Sleep, and I’ll wake you up in an hour, maybe two.”
“I—I don’t want to sleep.”
“I don’t either. I’d rather be awake, experiencing this with you.”
And though she was far from cold, a tremor rattled through her.
He’d just put into words what she felt.
Though his arms were pressing beneath her suddenly aching breasts and her buttocks were pressed to what she suspected, if couldn’t credit, was a massive erection, it wasn’t sexual. Or not only so. She’d never felt this close to anyone. This intimate. Even during her now almost-forgotten sexual encounters, she hadn’t been any closer to experiencing what she did with Harres than she was to one of the stars above.
She sighed, feeling as if her bones had turned to warm liquid and the rest of her senses had melted in the sluggish heat of her blood. “Stars. They are still up there.”
He nuzzled her cheek with his lips. “You don’t see them much where you live, eh?”
She sighed in deeper contentment. “Make that don’t see them at all. Not for years. But even when I did, I never saw so many. I didn’t think there were so many. Scientifically speaking, I know there are endless numbers of them in our galaxy alone. But I never thought we could actually see them. There are millions of them.”
Her voice sounded intoxicated to her ears. And she was. With the overpowering mixture of the virility enfolding her and the desert’s magnificent menace.
His voice poured directly through to her brain, frying more synapses. “Actually, only about eight thousand are visible to us poor earthlings in any given hemisphere, no matter how clear the skies are. And you won’t find any clearer anywhere in the world.”
That piece of info she hadn’t known. She turned in his arms languidly, looked up at him. “Don’t tell me you counted them.”
“I tried. Then had to borrow good scientists’ findings.”
“They seem so much more. But I’ll take your word for it. I’m just glad they all showed up tonight.”
“I ordered them to be present especially for you.”
Coming from any other man, that would have sounded like an outrageous—and annoying as hell—line. But somehow, from Harres, this force of nature who seemed to be as one with the powers of this land, his land, it didn’t seem far-fetched. She did feel as if he had an empathy, an understanding with their surroundings, as if they let him divine their secrets and share their strengths. And then, coming from the man who’d risked his life to save her, who’d lavished such care on her, showed her such admiration and restraint and solicitude, she could easily believe his wish to please her, to gift her. So even the sentiment behind the claim seemed right, sincere. Profound.
And if an inner voice told her it was his need to learn her secrets that fueled all of the above, she couldn’t listen. No one could be that good at hiding ulterior motives. And she had experienced him through the worst that could be thrown at a person. He’d shone through with gallantry and resourcefulness, with kindness and control.