A Lick Of Frost   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"It's in the drawer of the bedside table."

"You took it off as soon as you entered this room, didn't you?"

"Yes," I said.

He went to the closet and hung the jacket on a hanger. He started unbuttoning his shirt with his back still to me. "I do not understand why you would do that."

"One, a gun is not truly comfortable. Two, if I had needed my gun in this bedroom, it would mean that all of you were dead. If that happened, Frost, one gun in my hands would not save me."

He turned with the shirt unbuttoned to his waist. He pulled it the rest of the way out of his pants. And tired as I was, seeing him tug the shirt out of his pants, watching him undo the last few buttons, made my pulse speed just a little.

His skin was a strip of whiteness against the lesser whiteness of the cloth. He slid the shirt over his shoulders, exposing his muscled strength in inches. He'd learned that sometimes watching him slowly undress helped whet my appetite for him.

He hung his shirt on an empty hanger, even buttoning the collar so it would hang right and not wrinkle. But in doing so, he let me see the long line of his back and shoulders. He'd even swung all that silver hair over one shoulder so that the muscled smoothness of his back was an unobstructed show.

There were times when watching him hang up his clothes drove me nearly mad and had me making small eager noises before he was ready to come to bed. Today would not be one of those days. The view was lovely as always, but I was tired, and did not feel completely well. Part of it was grief and shock, but also the nagging knowledge that I was coming down with a cold or a virus. Frost had never had cold. He had never had so much as the sniffles.

He turned to face me, his hands sliding around the top of his pants. He'd had to undo the belt earlier to take off the rig of weapons. I had to be more tired than I knew to have missed him unbuckling his belt.

He started with the button at the top of his pants, and I rolled over. I rolled so my face was buried in the pillow and I could not watch. He was too beautiful to be real. Too amazing to be mine.

I felt the bed move, and knew he was on the bed with me. "Merry, what is wrong? I thought you enjoyed watching me."

"I do," I said, still not looking at him. How did I explain that I was having one of those rare moments when my mortality seemed too real and his immortality too large a reminder.

"Am I not enough to please you without Doyle by my side?"

That made me turn and look at him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, one leg bent at the knee toward me.