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The weather cleared on Friday and a warm breeze dried the puddles and left the world sparkling. Early Sunday morning, Annie packed a picnic lunch and waited impatiently at the farmhouse for Daniel.
She didn’t care where they went. “Just someplace pretty,” she said. He took the basket and her hand, and they cut across the farm and fields, heading toward the foothills. They walked in silence, but her hand closed tightly on his from time to time and she was supremely content.
They climbed a little hill and at the top of it, he brought them to a stop.
“Oh!” she gasped. Two steps into the field brimming with wildflowers, she sank to her knees. “Ohhh,” she sighed, looking out across the open meadow. It stretched out and down before her for several acres, a whole valley full of flowers, white and gold and purple and red and pink. Her arms reached out as if she could embrace it all.
“Ohhh. How beautiful!” she breathed. “Oh, Daniel, thank you! I... oh, how I needed this!” She stretched herself out, buried her face in the flowers and sighed again.
When she rolled over, his face was right there. She reached for him, locked her arms around his neck and gazed into his dark blue eyes. And there in the warm soft sun of spring, in this field of flowers nodding gently in the breeze, she felt her fears disperse.
She met his kiss with lips that hungered for him. He pulled her close against him and cradled her head in his hands. She reached for his shoulders, then ran her fingers down his back. He pressed her closer and she sighed, then sought his lips again.
“Aroon.” His voice was deeper, rougher than she’d ever heard it. “I want to see you.”
In a moment, she lay naked among the flowers, and the sun and his warm hands were touching her where she’d never been touched before. She knew she’d helped him with the buttons, the laces, yet she felt no shame.
His lips followed his hands now and her breath caught in her throat. She felt herself straining toward him, reaching for his hair, losing her fingers in its softness. He raised his head, looked down at her, and slowly pulled himself away.
“Aroon,” he whispered, his voice ragged with passion. “Annie, stop me. Before it’s too late.”
She gazed up at him through hooded lids and saw the sunlight glinting on the copper-colored hairs showing between the laces of his shirt. She’d wanted for so long to touch them, to see if they were as warm and soft as they appeared. She lifted her hand, tangled her fingers in the laces, brushed them over his chest.
As he moaned, his head tilted back. She could read his desire in the corded muscles of his neck, the labored heaving of his chest. She slipped her other hand up inside his shirt and watched in awe as he surrendered to his need of her. With one smooth motion, he stripped the shirt off and threw it aside, bent to take her face in both his hands. His mouth claimed hers and she felt the longing deep within him. The copper-colored hairs brushed against her and she wrapped her arms around him. She heard his soft moan as he slid her body in beneath his. Her blood took fire from his. He whispered brokenly into her ear.
Love you... want you... need you... want you... Then with a knowledge as ancient as her bloodlines, she shifted under him, listened as his words descended into moans, and knew she echoed every one.