Until You

by Janis Reams Hudson

  More heat, more moisture, pooling, flooding her. “And if I want more?”

  He stilled. His feet, his hands, his mouth. Stilled. Until slowly he raised his head to look into her eyes. He searched, probed, as if he could see into her very mind. “Anna?”

  She’d never seen a hungry wolf before, but she imagined this was what his eyes would look like. Hot, avid. Dark. “Kiss me,” she whispered.

  He didn’t need a second invitation. His mouth swooped, captured, ravished. He made demands with his lips that she never thought to deny. She had demands of her own. His tongue slid against hers, rough velvet. When he retreated, she followed. One of them groaned. She didn’t know who, didn’t care.

  That part of him that was pressed against her abdomen grew harder. She pressed against it with instinct as old as time, wanting closer, wanting to crawl inside his skin, become a part of him, wanting him to become a part of her.

  But his mouth, oh, his mouth. She couldn’t think, didn’t want to. Wanted only to savor the moment, the night. She didn’t know how her bra came to be unfastened, didn’t care. Nor did she care that she couldn’t stop the tiny whimpers of need coming from her throat when his hands slipped around to brush the sides of her breasts. Touch me. Oh...if he didn’t touch her she would go mad. She squirmed against him, twisted into his touch until he covered her aching breasts with those hot, strong hands.

  Heaven. She was floating in sheer heaven. Yet it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Something was missing. She didn’t know what until his thumbs skimmed over her nipples.

  Fire shot straight to her core. She threw her head back and cried out, unable to contain the pleasure that was nearly unbearable.

  At her response, the way her head rolled back, her eyes closed, her mouth open and gasping for breath, one thread of Gavin’s control snapped. In an instant he whipped the sweater off over her head. He had to taste, to touch. But first, he wanted to see her.

  Her skin was creamy pale, her breasts full, nipples aroused. “Beautiful,” he whispered as he leaned and took one of those hard, enticing nipples into his mouth. Her cry of pleasure, the way she dug her fingers into his shoulders, urged him on, as if he’d needed urging. He craved her taste, the feel of her on his tongue, the way a drowning man craves air.

  Then her hands were clawing at his T-shirt, delving beneath it to his skin. A shudder of pleasure racked him. He ached with wanting her, in his loins, in his heart. Even what few brain cells he had that were still in working order ached with wanting her. With his hands on the backs of her thighs, he lifted her until she wrapped her legs around his waist.

  As he trailed his mouth from the tip of one breast to the other, he couldn’t stop his hips from flexing, pressing his hardness against the very heat of her. The torture was exquisite. Holding her close, he staggered backward and settled on the edge of the couch, where he could lean back and take her weight, all of her, without removing his mouth from her breast. If he moved his mouth, he would die.

  Anna became dimly aware that they were on the couch, that she was straddling him, and could only be grateful that her knees weren’t expected to hold her any longer. What he was doing to her with his mouth, with the way he flexed his hips into hers...she couldn’t think, didn’t want to think. But she wanted to feel him. It didn’t seem fair that he should still be wearing a shirt. How dare he still be wearing a shirt.

  She struggled with it, tugged and pulled, but in the end he had to help her because her hands were shaking and her brain sent out conflicting signals to her fingers. Touch him. Get rid of the shirt. Touch him.

  “Yes,” Gavin whispered harshly. “Touch me. Let me touch you.”

  “Yes,” she answered, breathless. “Yes.”

  She splayed her hands across his chest, marveling at the sleek hardness of muscles, thrilling in the way his hands mirrored the movements of hers. When she trailed her fingers across his nipples, he released her breast. He sucked in a sharp breath and arched against her.

  “You like that,” she said in wonder.

  “Like?” His single laugh was harsh. “If you do it again I might embarrass myself.”

  Again she felt that sense of power surge through her, power that she could make this strong man gasp with just a touch. It was heady. Thrilling. She did it again.

  Gavin used his own hands to still the movement of hers. His chest heaved for breath. “I think...we need to slow down.”

  “Is that what you want?” Mercy, was that her voice, so low, so deliberately provocative?

  “What I want,” he said hotly, releasing her hands and strumming his thumbs over her nipples until she cried out, “is to tear those jeans off you and bury myself so deep inside you that I never find my way out. I want to give you so much pleasure that you scream with it.”

  Fear sapped the strength from her shoulders and skimmed down her spine—of course it was fear, it had to be fear. He wanted to make her scream.

  Gavin felt her shiver and cursed himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He knew he should take his hands from her breasts, but he couldn’t bring himself to. “I won’t hurt you, I’d never hurt you, Anna.” He couldn’t see her eyes. She had them closed. Because she was too embarrassed? Shocked by what he’d said? “Anna?”

  She raised her-head slowly and looked at this man who’d come into her life and turned it upside down with his smiles, his laughter, his music. His touch. His kiss.

  He wanted to make her scream. With pleasure.

  Yes, there was fear, of the unknown. But there was desire, and need, in such quantities as she’d never known. And now he was afraid he’d scared her away. “Gavin...” she heard herself whisper as she lowered her lips to his. “Make me scream, Gavin. Make me scream with pleasure.”

  For one brief instant everything inside Gavin stilled. Just shut down. Heart, lungs, mind. Then his lungs leaped for air, his heart thundered. His mind just flat disappeared. She was offering him heaven, with her mouth ravaging his—had a woman ever demanded so much with her mouth before? With her thighs open to him, straddling his hips, pressing her moist heat, heat he could feel even through her jeans and his, right where he wanted it, needed it.

  Make me scream with pleasure.

  He might die trying, but she would scream, he vowed to himself. With pleasure. And when she screamed, it would be his name. Only his. She was his.

  And he, he was coming to realize, might very possibly be only hers.

  In a movement to make a contortionist jealous, Gavin wrapped one arm around her hips, the other around her back, and somehow made it from the couch to his feet without breaking the kiss. Bed. He wanted her in bed, where they could stretch out and enjoy each other. He took a step in that direction, then cursed sharply.

  With his mouth suddenly gone from hers, Anna raised her head, dazed. The room was swaying. “What...”

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Just hold on to me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your coffee table just scored another point on me.”

  She hadn’t expected, amid the heated passion, to experience laughter, but she felt it bubbling up inside her.

  “If you laugh,” he warned playfully, “I’ll bite you.”

  Threading her fingers together behind his neck, she leaned back to see the laughter in his narrowed eyes. But there was heat there, as well, and it stole her breath. “Yeah?”

  Surprise flared in his eyes at her breathless, sultry tone. “Yeah.” Stepping carefully around his wood-and-glass nemesis, he kept his eyes locked with hers as he carried her across the room.

  Because she still had her legs wrapped around his waist, every step he took thrust him intimately against her. Her head fell back, her eyes slid closed. “Where?”

  He nuzzled her throat with lips and tongue. “Your bedroom.”

  A bubble of laughter broke loose. “You’re going to bite me in my bedroom? What part of my anatomy is that?”

  “I’ll show you.” He smiled against her th
roat. “But first I’m going to bite you in your hall.” With a low growl, he raked his teeth down the side of her throat.

  “Oh, I like...” Breathless with the sensations swamping her, the racing blood, the pounding heart, she arched to give him better access. “Being bitten...in my hall.”

  “Yeah?” When he felt the bed against his legs he sighed with relief and took her down slowly, gently.

  “Yeah.”

  The only light was the dim rectangle of the doorway, lit from the living room lamp. In the darkness of the room, he kissed her. He could take his time now. He still ached, was still desperate, still hard, but she was here in his arms, and that staggering rush of urgency loosened its claws and made room for tenderness.

  Anna nearly wept with it. She’d expected...she didn’t know what. A hurried fumbling in the dark to get the deed done?

  Not with Gavin. He took his time raining kisses and tenderness across her forehead, her cheeks, her nose. Down her jaw and over her lips. He kissed her neck and lapped at the hollow of her throat with the tip of his tongue.

  His lips trailed over the slope of one breast, then the other. Her breasts seemed to swell to meet his mouth. Their peaks tightened and begged for attention. Then he gave it, his mouth on one, his fingers on the other, strumming, plucking on invisible wires that reached to her core, opening a yawning, aching emptiness that cried out to be filled with him, only him.

  He made as if to leave her breast. In protest Anna slid her fingers through his hair and urged him to stay.

  In response he suckled harder, drawing her into his mouth. She was going to fly apart.

  The needy sound that came from her throat drove Gavin wild. He forgot about tenderness, about going slow, as he pleasured himself, and her, at her breast. Her fingers clutched his head, held him there, right where he wanted to be.

  But she had two breasts, and he wanted them both, had to claim them both. Trailing openmouthed kisses, he worked his way to the other one. And found it just as sweet, just as addictive as the first.

  She moved restlessly beneath him, her legs cradling his hips. He knew what she needed, what she craved, but not yet, not yet. He couldn‘t—wouldn’t—rush, despite the clamoring of his body for release.

  He ran his hand down her ribs, savoring the silky smoothness of her skin. To reach his goal, he had to leave the cradle of her thighs. But it would be worth it, he promised himself. For both of them.

  The denim at her waist was an insult to the senses. With a flick of his fingers, he freed the button and lowered the zipper. Beneath, he found elastic, cotton and heat to singe a man’s soul when he slid down and cupped her.

  With a startled cry of pleasure, Anna arched clear off the bed. She was dying. She had to be dying. No one could stand so many assaults on the senses and survive. But if this was death, she rushed to meet it.

  When he took his hand away from between her legs she whimpered in protest. Then it was back, slipping beneath the elastic, beneath the cotton, to touch her flesh, to stroke, to delve, to drive her to madness. If this was where she was supposed to scream, she was doomed to disappoint them both. She needed air with which to accomplish it. All that came out was a strangled sob of pleasure.

  Her response, the sound from her throat, the hot, wet heat as he delved inside her with one finger, snapped another thread of Gavin’s control. Urgency, need, hunger. They clawed at him, forcing him to abandon her breast and pull his hand from her jeans. If he didn’t get rid of her jeans and his, he was going to die. Just flat out die, and no help for it.

  He wasn’t ready to die. He was ready to erupt. His hands were shaking. His hands have never shaken before, not like this, not at a time like this.

  But there had never been a time like this, not for him. He was thirty-two years old, and he’d been around the block a time or two. He’d had his share of women. This was different. Anna was different. She was important. She was...everything. She was his.

  His hands shook harder. She had to help him get her shoes and jeans off. He managed his own hurriedly, then reached into his wallet for the condoms he had bought that afternoon. To give himself time to regain a modicum of control, he put one on then stretched out beside her, kissed her ear, traced a hand down one thigh, up the other. “I wish I’d turned on the light,” he whispered. “I want to see you.”

  She made a sound in her throat that rang with impatience and thrilled him.

  “You’re so soft.” And he was hard, and aching with it. Leaning over her, he took her mouth with his, suddenly starved for the taste of her, the dark sweetness he couldn’t seem to get enough of.

  When his hand skimmed up the inside of her thigh, closer and closer to the place that throbbed with need, Anna shivered. When he skimmed past to trace her other thigh, she made a sound of protest. Her blood rushed and heated. Tiny flames of need licked at her core.

  Then he was over her, spreading her legs, making a place for himself. With everything she had, she welcomed him, but he only teased her, touching her, tracing a path from one inner thigh to the other with his fingers. “Please,” she begged against his mouth. “Please.”

  The final thread of Gavin’s control snapped, freeing him from restraint. He had enough sanity left to keep from plunging into her in one wild thrust, but just barely. She was hot and wet and ready for him. But she was small and delicate, so he took care, entered her slowly, a fraction at a time.

  It nearly killed him. She was tight. So tight that for a minute he feared she’d never done this before. Sheer, blinding terror that he could hurt her held him still.

  But she wasn’t having it. She raised her hips and took him that next distance.

  At finding no barrier, Gavin shook with relief.

  Anna was too caught up in sensations to notice. He was filling her, stretching her. A part of him was literally inside her body, pushing away the emptiness, filling her with light, with solid heat, with pleasure so exquisite it bordered on pain.

  When he started to withdraw, panic threatened. Then he thrust gently forward again and filled her more than before. Withdrew and filled. Again and again, consuming her, pulling her out of herself, joining them until there was no thought of two separate bodies, there was only one, and it was called them.

  He took her places she hadn’t known existed, dark, secret places, erotic places. Places of need and hunger, of mind-numbing pleasure. Higher and higher, until she feared she would simply fly off the face of the earth. Something was happening inside her. The pleasure and the pressure were too much. She couldn’t...couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hold back the tide threatening to pull her under.

  Gavin felt the tension mount in her, felt her resistance. “Let go, Anna.” Sweat beaded his brow, his back. Blood and hips pumped harder, faster. “Let go. I won’t let you fall.”

  And then it was happening. She’d been right—she flew off the face of the earth.

  And he’d been right. She screamed.

  At the sound of his name from her lips, Gavin let go and followed her over the edge. He was unaware that her name spilled from his lips.

  It was some time before hearts slowed and breath came easily again. When he could, and wishing he could see her better than the dim light allowed, Gavin levered himself up on his forearms to relieve her of some of his weight. With a thumb, he traced her lips. “You okay?”

  Her laugh was shaky and filled with shyness. “I don’t know. Am I supposed to be?”

  “You screamed.”

  She heard the smugness in his voice and bit back a grin. “I didn’t want to bruise your ego.”

  “That was generous of you.”

  “I thought so. The music stopped.”

  “No.” He brushed his lips over hers. “It’s playing in my head. I think, tomorrow, I’ll have to write it down.” His teeth flashed in the darkness. “I thought you said you weren’t very good at dancing.”

  Incredibly, she felt desire curl in her belly again. “I wasn’t. Until you. You lead well.”

>   That fast, with her simple words, he wanted her again. “Then follow me again.” Later he would tell her that she’d just given him the missing piece of the song that had been writing itself in his head all evening. For now, he had better uses for his mouth than talking.

  This time the loving was slow and sweet, though no less hot. He never left her, grew hard again while still deep inside. Incredible. She was incredible. And irresistible. He took them both up slowly, oh, so slowly, sending her over, holding himself back. Shifting, moving, kissing, whispering dark words. Then he did it again until he had her sobbing for breath. And yet again, but this time he went with her. It was as powerful, as life-altering, as before.

  They slept then, wrapped together in each other’s arms, and woke twice in the night to love again.

  He finally got his wish of being able to see her, all of her, when the sun came up. She woke to find he’d pulled the covers aside—she couldn’t even remember when they’d crawled beneath them. He was watching her.

  She was startled to realize that instead of embarrassment, she felt pleasure at the way his eyes devoured her.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. “Perfect.”

  “I’m not.” She stroked his shoulder, loving the feel of velvety skin over firm muscle. “But you make me feel that way.”

  “You,” he said with a crooked smile that nipped at her heart, “make me feel like a randy teenager.”

  Like Gavin, Anna took advantage of the light to look her fill. He was, quite simply, magnificent, dark male flesh and lean muscle. “I don’t see any pimples,” she managed, becoming aroused again just looking at him.

  Gavin laughed and rolled on top of her. “I wasn’t talking about skin. Well, I was, but—I was talking about hormones.”

  “Yeah?” She grinned.

  “Yeah.” He traced a finger along her inner arm. “Speaking of skin, I like your tattoo.”

  Having forgotten it, she glanced down at her inner arm and let out a bark of laughter at the four-inch-long Harley-Davidson “Don’t worry, it’ll wear off in a few days” logo plastered there. Interesting, she thought. Anna Lee Collins, with a tattoo. “How’s yours?” She grabbed his arm and turned it.