Private North Read online

  “Dalton,” I pleaded, “touch me, please.”

  With some effort he lowered himself to the ground. His face twisted slightly as he found the best position for his leg. I sat up and looked at him. “I don’t want this to be hard for you.” I sat on my knees and leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Tell me what to do.” I kissed his neck. “I want you to forget the pain, all of it,” I whispered. I pushed his long hair behind his ear. “I want you to feel only me, touching you, kissing you.” I took his bottom lip between my two lips and tugged on it. “I’ll do anything . . . just ask.”

  He reached back and pulled some pillows down and leaned back against the couch. I moved to straddle his lap but he shook his head. “First, put another log on the fire,” his voice was low and heavy.

  I bit my lip and smiled flirtatiously at him. I crawled on my hands and knees, completely naked and exposed to his gaze. I knew he was watching me and the thought of him staring at me so intimately made me want him that much more. As I reached the fire grate, I got up on my knees and leaned far over the stone hearth to drop the piece of wood inside. “Shit, woman, do you know what you’re doing to me?”

  I stayed on my knees, complete exposed and feeling deliciously wicked. My skin glowed red from the heat of the fire as I moved slowly away from the hearth.

  A low groan rolled up from his throat. “You don’t even know how fucking bad I want you right now.”

  I crawled back to him and leaned down over him. He groaned with pleasure as I dragged my tongue along the hard hot length of him. He took hold of my arms and pulled me up. He reached back for the condom and I straddled his lap. I bent forward and kissed his mouth as his fingers drifted down around my bottom to the moist heat between my thighs. A small cry erupted from my throat as his fingers slid inside of me. I moved up and down with the movement of his hand.

  I laced my fingers through his hair and pulled his head back. I kissed him, smothering my faint moans of pleasure against his mouth. He skillfully moved his fingers inside of me, bringing me to the edge where I would die of need if I didn’t have him soon. I lifted slightly up on my knees and stared down at him. Long black lashes shadowed his eyes.

  I kissed him again. “Please,” I begged. “I want you, Dalton. Please.”

  A gasp escaped my lips as he dragged his long fingers out from between my legs. He gripped my hips hard as he brought me down over the thick, hot length of him. I collapsed my knees to drive him deeper inside of me. My fingers dug into his hard shoulders as I rocked back and forth over him, each movement taking him farther inside of me.

  I lowered my face against him.

  “No, Auggie, I want to see your face.”

  I lifted my head from his shoulder and I closed my eyes as my head spun from the intense feeling of him. His fingers bit into the skin on my hips as I moved back and forth over him with increased urgency. His thrusts quickened and my fingers dug deeper into his shoulders. I screamed out as I went over the edge and into an explosion of sensations that sent body wracking tremors through me and the whole time he drove himself even deeper. His grip on me tightened and he groaned as his body went rigid beneath me and then he slowed. I collapsed into his embrace, and we stayed silent in each other’s arms with only the crackling fire for music. The heat radiated across my naked back as I stayed tucked in his large, protective arms.

  “I’ve never screamed out before.” A confession that was easier with my face pressed against his shoulder.

  “You were forewarned. I told you my plans.”

  I smiled and wrapped my finger around the chain of his dog tags. “True.” I lifted my head. “You seemed to enjoy yourself as well.”

  He tightened his arms around me. “Shit, Auggie, I’ve been wanting you since I saw you fidgeting in your snow boots and trying your damndest to fade into Karl’s sundry counter. Even before that. What’s that movie line— you had me at ‘please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead’.”.

  “Jeez, don’t bring up that embarrassing morning. I wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor when I saw you walk in to the emporium.”

  “All I could think was— she might be a crappy driver, but I’ll bet she is one helluva kisser.” He kissed me. “Turns out I was right.”

  “I am not a crappy driver. And, even though I could easily sit here all night, naked in your arms, the embarrassing incident on the road would be nothing compared to having your dad and brother walk in on us in this state of undress.”

  His arms tightened. “First, you’ll have to free yourself from my grasp.”

  “Fine, but if we get caught the humiliation will send me from this house forever.”

  He dropped his arms but made no move to leave our cozy spot in front of the fire. The hunger from moments before returned to his green eyes. “How the hell am I going to brush past you in the kitchen, or slide by you in the hallway, or sit across from you at the table without touching you? Maybe we could send my dad and brother off on a cruise for the rest of the break.”

  “We could send him to the south of France. I’ll just tell my mom we needed to get rid of them so we could have wild, unbridled sex in front of the fireplace.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  I smiled down at him. “Being a normal warm-blooded girl, I can tell you that I could spend the rest of the day, hell, the rest of winter break, watching you strut around stark naked, but I think you should probably get dressed too.”

  He sighed. “I guess.” He rubbed his stomach. “I just realized I’m starved too.” He pushed off the floor without the usual amount of breath holding. “My leg feels better after warming it by the fire.”

  “Oh, I was hoping you were going to say that I made it feel better.”

  He reached for my hand and pulled me into his arms. “No, you made every other part of me feel better.” He kissed me again. “Including some very special parts.”

  “O.K. now you are sounding like a salesman. You’ve already made the sale, remember? But now that you’ve brought it up, maybe you should use a heating pad more on your leg. It seems like the cold, harsh weather outside would aggravate the pain even more.”

  “Maybe. I’ll see if Dad has one. He has problems with his knee sometimes, one of those harrowing golf injuries.”

  I lifted up on my toes and kissed his chin. “I’m getting dressed before this whole dreamy afternoon goes badly south.” I swept up his blanket and hurried down the hall to his room. I slid on my jeans and pulled on my sweater. Compared to the air surrounding the fire, the air in the rest of the house was quite chilly. I raced in my bare feet across the freezing wood floor to the comfort of my slippers, made even cozier by the fire.

  A very breathtaking, very naked, Dalton leaned against the kitchen counter nibbling on a cold chunk of macaroni and cheese impaled on the prongs of a fork. “It’s like a noodle and cheese popsicle.”

  “Don’t you think you should get dressed? Please.”

  He sighed and put his popsicle on the counter. “I guess I’ll get dressed and then we can decorate that tree.” He used the counter and the wall for support as he headed to the hallway. He stopped and looked back at me. “I just had a great idea. Naked tree trimming party.”

  I lifted my brow and pointed toward the hallway.

  Ethan and Professor North had still not returned by the time we’d dragged up the boxes of decorations and placed the tree in a stand.

  I tossed a strand of lights over the top branches. “I hope they didn’t have trouble with the car in this snowfall.”

  “Nah, my dad is up to something. I know he had a good explanation for the guys in the black car but something is going on. Just not sure what. His whole mood seems off.”

  I looked around the tree at Dalton. “So, it’s not just my imagination? I thought maybe he was just a completely different guy at
home than in the classroom.”

  “No, he’s definitely not acting like himself, and Ethan is acting weird too.”

  I dragged the strand of lights around the tree. “What do you think it could be?”

  “No clue, but I think my arrival has thrown a wrench into whatever it was.”

  “Strange.” I lifted a fragile white snowflake ornament from the box and held it up. Tiny facets of colored glass sparkled in the light of the room. “It looks like your mom put a lot of thought and care into picking each ornament. This one is amazing.” I hung it on a branch.

  “My mom loved the winter holidays. She’d start decorating long before Christmas. The house would be covered in ribbons and pine wreaths.”

  I leaned over the box and lifted out a round circle of clay that had a tiny stick reindeer etched into it. The name Dalton was scratched in crooked letters beneath the reindeer. “Oh my gosh, this is so cute.” I held it up for him. “We never had stuff like this on our tree. My mom had some interior decorator friend create a theme for the tree each year. We never saved ornaments from one year to the next. Our tree always looked like it should belong in the entry way of the White House.”

  “I made that in boy scouts.”

  I laughed. “While I am very thankful for the boy scouts teaching you the all important skill of being prepared, I have to say that I just can’t see you sitting in a little uniform making picture frames out of macaroni noodles.”

  “I joined for one thing and one thing only. I wanted to race in the soapbox derby. Our troop held a race once a year, and I really wanted to fly down the street in a homemade car. It was hard because I had to suffer through the meetings. I think the scouts would have much more long term membership if they allowed girls into the troops. Just saying.”

  “Actually, you’re probably not too far off base there. So did you win the race?”

  “Dad helped me build an awesome car. We painted it dark blue with gold stripes. And it was fast, too fast. I was in the lead when a back wheel flew off and I fishtailed into a telephone pole. My mom came racing down the street in her heels, holding her purse and screaming, ‘my baby, my baby’.” He laughed to himself and grew quiet as he seemed to get momentarily lost in the memory. “The whole thing was pretty damn embarrassing.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “Only my pride.”

  “Your poor mom. She must have been so scared.”

  “Yeah, she was always worried about all of us. Turned out that she was the one we needed to be worried about.” He glanced down at the box of ornaments in front of him. “I could bring a hundred other girls over here to decorate this tree,” he looked up at me, “and none of them would have been able to get a sense of how important these ornaments were to my mom. But you felt it with just one glass snowflake.” He paused and swallowed hard as he gazed at me. “And that’s what I’ve got, Auggie. Opinion changer or not. No sales pitch, no bull shit, just the raw truth.”

  I fought back tears as I climbed into his lap and wrapped my arms around his neck. “What’s that movie line— ‘you had me at Sugarplum’.”

  Chapter 14

  It was good that I now had more time to work on the artifacts because I quickly discovered that concentrating on the task had become much more difficult with visions of a very naked Dalton floating through my head. And he’d been right. Meandering around the same house and passing through the same small rooms, all the while suppressing the urge to touch each other, was going to be nothing short of torture.

  I pulled a piece from one of the three boxes marked New Kingdom and a flash of pale blue caught my eye. It was a long narrow shard that had come from a long necked vessel. Ethan leaned over my shoulder. “Apparently that pale blue color was all the rage in the New Kingdom.”

  “It’s so subtle and so beautiful.”

  “There have been studies done on it. Cobalt and traces of zinc and nickel perhaps. The Ancient Egyptians were chemists as well.”

  “No modern science and technology yet their knowledge and skills seemed to have no bounds. Amazing.” I looked up at him. “How are things going with deciding on a permanent home for the gold bracelet?”

  My question caught him completely off guard and I had no idea why.

  “Uh— uh yeah the arm band.” It was obvious he was devising a quick and plausible answer. “Honestly, my dad hasn’t really kept me all that informed about it.” The one thing I’d learned about Ethan North was that the muscle in his jaw twitched when he was tense. It was twitching like crazy.

  A quick subject change was in order. It was a subject of much greater interest. “Where’s Dalton this morning?” I asked casually.

  His shoulders relaxed. “Not sure. He said something about gathering wood. I think he was going to ride out on the snowmobile to find kindling and fallen branches.” He laughed and I was glad I’d changed subjects. “He said something about a new found urge to have a roaring fire in the hearth.”

  I turned back to the monitor to hide the blush in my cheeks. I picked up the blue shard of pottery. “I’ll input this piece and then I think I’m going to get dressed and take a walk outside. I’m not getting enough exercise, and with your dad’s fantastic cooking, I fear my bottom is going to grow to the size of this chair.”

  “A walk sounds like a great idea. I’m going snowboarding this morning,” he said. “That snowfall last night left a hard to resist layer of powder on the slopes. Too much fun to pass up.”

  “I don’t blame you for wanting to get out there,” I said with what was probably way too much enthusiasm. “You know what? This piece can wait. I’m going to get my boots and coat. Have a great time on the slopes.”

  I hurried out and got dressed as quickly as possible. Chances were, Dalton had already left the shed on the snowmobile, but it was worth a try. And I really did need to get out and exercise.

  The sky had cleared so the temperature had dropped. I kept my face down to avoid the biting cold. Ethan had been excited about the fresh snow, but I found that it made the trudge across the yard that much harder. Well worn foot paths had disappeared, and I had to blaze a new trail to the shed. I heard a clanging sound coming from the inside, and my heart raced ahead with the prospect of seeing him.

  Dalton looked up from the workbench and smiled. “I see you’ve unchained yourself from the computer.” He lifted the ax, and the silver blade gleamed in the sunlight that seeped through the slats in the shed wall. “The handle broke off as I chopped down the tree. My dad’s not big on taking care of his tools. Looks good as new now.” He put down the ax and motioned for me to come closer.

  I walked up to him. Heated tension filled the air between us. It was the same intense heat I’d felt in the kitchen this morning and in the dining room where we’d both pretended to be interested in our breakfast. He pushed to his feet, and without warning, he took hold of my waist and perched me up on the edge of the workbench.

  Dalton stood between my thighs. He took hold of my face and kissed me softly at first and then with more urgency. His hands reached up between us and he unzipped my coat. His fingers were cold as he reached beneath my sweater.

  I squirmed away from his touch. “Your hands are like ice,” I said breathlessly between kisses.

  He pulled out his hands and looked down at them. “Hmm, I guess I should warm them up first.” I sucked in a gasp as he tucked them between my thighs. I wrapped my arms around his neck and sighed softly into his ear as he stroked his fingers against me.

  I pushed against the pressure of his hand.

  Dalton pushed the coat off my shoulders. The temperature in the shed bordered on freezing, but the searing heat spreading between my legs and through my body made it easy to ignore.

  “Ethan went snowboarding, but what about your dad?” I asked.

  Dalton pulled away his hands and mouth
and I nearly fell forward off the bench. He walked over to the shed door and slid it shut and then returned to me. “Dad hates the cold. He rarely steps out of the house in winter.”

  He looked down at my boots and jeans. “Damn this winter clothing.”

  I reached for the top of his jeans and my fingers slid under the fly and popped open the buttons. “If we were in California, I’d probably be wearing a cotton dress . . . with easy to remove panties.” I pushed his jeans halfway down his hips. My fingers wrapped around him. His eyes closed as my finger traced the hot, moist tip.

  “Shit, Auggie, you’re making me crazy.” His mouth came down over mine.

  He felt thick and hard as my hand moved back and forth. A small moan of agony rumbled in his throat as I unwrapped my fingers. I hopped down from the bench and walked over to the stool. He watched me through heavy lids as I sat down. “Come over here, soldier.”

  His green eyes darkened as he approached me. I pushed his jeans down farther, and as I took him into my mouth, his fingers tangled in my hair. My tongue and lips slid along his hot skin as my hand pushed him farther into my mouth. “Damn, Auggie,” he said hoarsely, “I’ve been hard all day just thinking about you.” My movements quickened, and his fingers tightened almost painfully in my hair. He groaned and shuddered with release.

  His hands fell away from my hair and I peered up at him. His chest rose and fell as he stared down at me. “You are full of surprises, my sweet, little coed.” I stood and he took hold of my wrist. “I always return the favor.”

  This time he reached for the button and zipper on my jeans. “It’s too cold,” I insisted, but I wanted it badly. Taking him in my mouth, tasting him and hearing him groan in pleasure because of it had made me want it more than ever.

  “If there’s a will,” he said quietly. In one motion, he pushed my jeans and panties down to just below my bottom. The cold air felt shocking and thrilling all at once. “Turn around,” his voice was deep and rough with desire again.