Free Joshua and the Cowgirl by Sherryl Woods

fingers found her heat at last. She arched her back, moving against his hand, pleading with him. “Joshua, please hurry. Please.”
    With slow deliberation, he pulled back. “Not yet. Not yet.”
    Not until he could strip away the shirt that hid her from his gaze. Not until he could take the rosy tip of each full breast into his mouth, thrilling at the responsiveness, the faint gasp of pure pleasure. Not until he could caress the taut flesh of her belly, the gentle curve of her hip, the silky flesh of her thighs. Not until his own body was hard and throbbing with need as her hesitant fingers became bolder and bolder. Not until he could banish the last, lingering doubt about the consequences of what was happening between them and give himself over to the wild sensations that made his blood pulse with pure fire.
    With one last shred of sanity, Joshua found protection and slipped it on, telling her with that instinctive, caring gesture that there would be no repeat of her past, no lingering regret for her to manage in the years to come. Whether she understood all that was beyond him. He knew only that he needed her in some elemental way that was both wonderfully simple and terrifyingly complex. Those were things he would have to sort out later, after he’d made love to her, after he’d gentled her like a skittish filly and made her his own.
    Damn, he thought as he lowered himself to the bed beside her. It was going to be Garrett, after all. There didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do to stop the loving, the unexpectedly sweet emotion that crowded his heart. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
    With slow, deliberate kisses he stirred her again, his own body responding instantly, this time demanding fulfillment. Eyes locked on hers, he entered her with one slow, tormenting stroke. As her silken heat closed around him, a deep sigh of astonishing contentment shuddered through him. Then he was moving, each thrust binding them together, sealing their fate in a way that should have terrified him, but instead filled him with a sense of completeness he had never known.
    Watching her, he saw the excitement build in her eyes, felt the tension in her body as it strained toward that moment of pure ecstasy that lurked again and again just beyond them. Then with one final, deep stroke, he felt her control shatter, heard her exultant cry. His own body splintered into a million sparks of dazzling light. He cried out her name and then, as they floated slowly back to reality, he murmured it again.
    “Garrett, my love,” he whispered with a sigh. “Oh, baby, I love you.”
    He felt her go absolutely still beneath him.
    “What is it?” he asked at once. “What’s wrong?”
    Propping himself on an elbow, he studied her face, still glowing with the thrill of their lovemaking. There was no missing the troubled expression, the tiny flicker of panic that sprang to life in her eyes. Guessing at the cause, he said gently, “I do love you, you know.”
    “You can’t,” she said matter-of-factly, avoiding his gaze.
    “Oh, but I can.”
    “You and I would be a disaster together.”
    “You call the last hour or so a disaster?”
    She flushed. “It was a release, that’s all. It could have happened between any two people who’d been through what we’d been through tonight.”
    “That hardly qualifies as a disaster, then, does it?” he said, barely tempering his anger.
    “No, but I’d say the description fits all the other hours since you and I have known each other.” She said it flatly, as if emotions could always be fit into tidy little compartments, separated as black or white. Didn’t she know about the grays? Didn’t she understand anything at all about the power of love?
    “Okay, I’ll admit we have a few little differences we’ll need to work out,” he conceded.
    “That’s like describing the Rockies as a couple of puny little hills.”
    “The pioneers made it across the Rockies. We can get past our