Twin of Fire Read online

  The cabin was on a slight hill in a clearing in the forest, mountains on all sides, tall trees a few yards from the cabin. The grass was laced with wild rose bushes that were just beginning to bloom.

  A sound on the stair behind her made her turn. Lee was just coming up with a tray in his hands, the smell of the food making her mouth water.

  “I thought I heard you,” he said, smiling at her and looking with interest at her bare legs below the shirt. Blair self-consciously slipped back into the bed and Lee put the tray across her lap.

  He removed the cloth that covered the food. “I’m afraid there’s no fresh food, but we have everything that’s ever been canned or preserved.” There was ham and bacon, cheese, peaches, corn muffins, and a tiny dish of wild strawberries.

  “It’s a feast and I’m starving,” she said, and started to eat with gusto.

  Lee lounged across the foot of the bed and watched her with a steady intensity that began to make her blush. She was more than aware that now all obstacles to the wedding night were at last removed.

  “How long did I sleep?” she asked, mouth full of food.

  Lee removed his pocket watch in a slow, easy way that made her pause in her eating. He looked at it, then put it on the little table next to the bed, as if he had no intention of putting it back into his pocket.

  “Fourteen hours,” he said.

  Blair stuffed a corn muffin into her mouth so fast that she nearly choked. “You said that this was your father’s cabin. Have you been here often?”

  Leander began to unbutton his shirt, taking his time over each button, then slowly pulling it out of his pants. “Since I was a kid,” he said.

  His eyes on hers were intense and serious—and the way he was looking at her through his lashes was making her nervous. She began to eat faster. “Did you come up here for elk?”

  Lee, his eyes never leaving hers, began to unbutton the placket of his trousers.

  It didn’t take a second glance to show that he was wearing no underwear. Blair’s hand began to tremble.

  Lee stood and let his trousers slip to the floor.

  Blair looked up at him, her eyes on his, her hand halfway to her mouth with a piece of bacon, while he bent toward her and removed the tray and bacon, and set them on the floor.

  “You’re not Houston now,” he said.

  For a moment, Blair was afraid of him. She’d fought him every minute for the past few weeks, and she’d felt so guilty about what she’d done to her sister that now she couldn’t really believe that it was all right to give in to him.

  Lee bent toward her and she moved backward until her head came into contact with the headboard. Part of her wanted to move away, but the other part—the biggest part—would have died before moving.

  Very gently, Lee’s lips touched hers. He didn’t press her or touch her in any other way. There was just this lovely man with this magnificent, nude body bending over her and kissing her.

  Blair started sliding down in the bed, or perhaps running down into it would better describe it, rather like butter melting. Lee stayed with her, bending as far as he could until he lost balance and fell on top of her.

  From then on, there was no more slowness. Blair opened her mouth to his kiss, and Leander became like a wild man: kissing her with passion, his hands tearing at her hair, running all over her body, ripping the shirt from her. Blair was caught by his passion. For weeks, she’d wanted him, and now he was hers to touch and hold, to help her get rid of this ache that had been caused by holding back for too long.

  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