by BETH KERY
She wanted to see his rigid restraint shatter.
She longed to see him erupt in pleasure.
Moving her head in a darting motion, she tried to get a better angle on him. It took her a moment to realize she no longer saw his frantic pumping motions.
The lock clicked. She barely backed up in time before the metallic door swung open. She jumped when it clattered loudly against the next stall. Her breath froze in her lungs. Seth stood there, arms at his side, his face the vivid picture of a dangerous storm about to break. Her gaze dropped to his crotch. His jeans were still unfastened and bunched around his hips. His cock was inside his briefs, but still flagrantly obvious. It tented the front of his white boxer briefs, huge and intimidating-looking. Her stare locked with his.
Oh my God. What should I say? What should I do?
It wasn’t as if a person was ever taught to deal with a situation like this.
Then he was stalking past her, jerking up his jeans and fastening them as he went. She heard the water start to run at the sink. When she mustered enough nerve to move, she peered around the bank of metal stalls and saw him standing at the sink. He washed his hands vigorously with soap and water, then leaned down and splashed his face repeatedly. She could tell by his stiff, forceful movements he was furious.
He shut off the tap and turned to retrieve several paper towels from the dispenser. After he’d thrown away the damp towels, she finally found her voice.
“I just thought you might want this,” she said lamely, holding up the toiletry bag. Her gaze kept bouncing off him, like he was a fire too hot and radiating for it to rest for long. “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Gia.”
She blinked and gaped up at his face when he cut her off harshly.
“Give me the bag, and go out to the car and wait for me.”
Her mouth fell open in disbelief. His eyes were molten. With that ominous pronouncement, did he mean what she thought he meant? One dark brow quirked as he stared at her stunned face. “Why are you surprised? You’re the one who won’t give me a second of rest. You should be the one to give me a moment of relief, don’t you think?”
His quiet, grim voice echoed in her head repeatedly. Her skin tingled beneath his scoring stare. She said nothing when he reached out and took the bag from her frozen, clawlike hand, setting it on the counter.
“Go on. I’ll be there in a moment.” She started to move toward the door, her heart beating uncomfortably hard in her chest. “Wait,” he barked.
She turned abruptly, surprised by his command. He tore off a paper towel and walked over to the sink. He wetted the towel. Without uttering a word, he stepped over to her. He cupped the back of her head with his palm and began to rub the towel over her lips, wiping off the paint there. Her lips parted when he moved the wet towel in the slit. His gaze narrowed on her mouth. He pushed with his hand at the back of her head gently and with the towel firmly, her soft flesh molding and succumbing to his touch.
“There’s a surveillance camera aimed at the cash register and the front door. Keep your head down when you pass. Go on,” he said gruffly as his hand lowered.
Eight
Gia swallowed thickly. Something ought to be said in these circumstances, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think what. She was feeling too much to talk. She took one last look into his gleaming, pantherlike eyes and stumbled out of the bathroom.
The trip back to the SUV was undertaken in a fog. She sat in the passenger seat, her gaze trained on the path to the store, breathing in ragged anticipation. He came within a minute of her, his stride long and rapid.
Hasty.
He clambered into the SUV. His scent followed him: soap, the lingering fragrance from his hair.
Male arousal.
He twisted the keys in the ignition. Her buzzing confusion mounted.
“What are we—?”
“Just a second,” he growled, swinging the vehicle around aggressively. He drove to a rear part of the parking lot that was deep in shadow. The car came to an abrupt halt. He threw it into Park. Then he was reaching for her.
She supposed some people might have called his kiss angry, but Gia understood it wasn’t. It was wild and furious, yes, but with need, not anger. She shared in his mood, so his mouth seizing hers single-mindedly only felt right. Delicious. He wasn’t going to hold back this time, she knew. His need had finally torn through his rigid defenses and irrational prejudice.
He tasted like peppermint and Seth. He’d held back in the bathroom to brush his teeth, she realized with amazed excitement. That knowledge struck her as poignantly sweet, especially in the fury of the raging storm of his lust. He ate her with focused fervor, biting at her lips, slicking the sting with the tip of his tongue, plunging into her mouth with unapologetic greed, and applying a slight suction that made her desperate. She sunk her fingers into his hair, straining to meet his powerful hunger.
He ripped at the button fly of her jeans and spoke next to her lips between small, lustful bites of her flesh.
“You’re killing me.” He shoved his hand into her underwear and her eyes sprang wide. His fingertip found her clit with unerring accuracy.
“No. You’re killing me,” she whimpered, kissing him back feverishly. “Oh God,” she moaned, because the ridge of his finger was rubbing her with a friction that made her eyes cross. Reality trickled into her rabid excitement. She reached across the console for that sexy belt buckle. “Let me first,” she hissed against his lips. “I’m the one who interrupted you.”
He growled in protest, pushing her back slightly with the mass of his solid body, continuing to agitate her clit in a bull’s-eye fashion. His hand opened at the small of her back, where he applied a slight pressure, pushing her against his agitating hand between her thighs. She writhed against him, struggling to reach him again. It was a wrestling match, but a hot, tense, sweaty one. She found the column of his thick, rigid cock pressing against his jeans and rubbed it with single-minded purpose through the fabric.
“Jesus,” he muttered. His head thudded against the back of the seat. She saw the pain on his face. She loved the evidence of his stark need and hated it, all at once. She released his belt, ripped at his button fly and tried to get the denim over his hips.
“Help me,” she insisted.
Gritting his teeth, he raised his head. With the aid of the dim dashboard lights, she thought she glimpsed grim resignation etched on his rugged features. He lifted his hips, assisting her in shoving his jeans down his thighs. She banged her elbow against the console when she jerked at the stretchy fabric of his boxer briefs.
“Ouch,” she mumbled, but she hardly registered the pain.
“Maybe we should get a room,” he said thickly. He inhaled raggedly when her fist enclosed his cock. “Jesus,” he gasped.
He was enormous with need, teeming with pulsing life.
“I don’t think this is going to wait for a room.” She began to pump him, if not as forcefully as she’d witnessed him pounding himself in the stall, every bit as fast and twice as eager. This wasn’t a moment for lingering caresses and foreplay. He was in a fever of need, and she was rabid to bring him relief.
With a choked sound, he pushed his underwear down below his balls, cupping them as she pumped the rigid staff. She felt his stare on her as he watched her, hell-bent on jacking him. Her awareness of his observance made her clit prickle with amplified excitement. He lifted his hand and covered hers, guiding her, showing her exactly what he wanted without words. When she followed his lead, tightening her strokes on the stalk just below the fat, delineated crown, his hand dropped to his testicles again. It aroused her, the way he touched himself in front of her without a trace of hesitation. Her pumping grew more forceful. He growled tensely and cupped his balls, massaging them. Wild with arousal at the viral image h
e made, she strained toward his lap, but the console got in her way. She hungered to feel the rigid, warm flesh parting her lips, the hard pressure of him straining in her mouth. He groaned and halted her with one hand at her nape.
“Not now. It’s too late. I’m going to come,” he grated out, sounding agonized. He groaned and grabbed at the hem of his T-shirt, jerking it up his taut belly. He began to ejaculate as she pumped him, white jets of semen spilling down to her fingers and shooting onto his belly. Just when she thought he was slowing, his muscles tensed again hard. She jerked his cock with force, and he heaved a guttural moan. Another jet erupted and fell back onto the swollen crown, seeping onto her fingers. His male scent entered her nose, slightly salty, musky . . . heady.
She stared up into his face while he panted and his muscles clenched, continuing her strokes with force until he was emptied. He finally sagged in the seat, the tangible tension in his big, long muscles dissipating at last. His eyes were closed.
He opened them slowly as her movements gentled.
“So much for not giving in,” he said.
She smiled. “Restraint is overrated.” She glanced down to his come-damp belly and cock. “Highly.”
His mouth quirked slightly in amusement, but she still sensed his grim resignation. As always, she experienced the strength of his character. He was not a man used to submitting to need once he’d decided there was reason for restraint. Maybe that’s what had made his surrender to it so intoxicating to her.
He reached around the seat with one arm and retrieved a box of tissues from the backseat floorboard. She took several and mopped up her hands, his belly, and then, very gently, his cock. When she’d finished, she lifted herself slightly over the console to get the angle she hadn’t achieved earlier. She pressed her lips against the moist, pulsing shaft. He made a rough sound in his throat, and his hand cupped the back of her skull. His fingers clutched at her head when she slid her lips over the still turgid, moist crown.
She leaned up, slicking her tongue along her lower lip, capturing his taste. “I hope that means that my boy look isn’t what got you all hot and bothered,” she told him. His nostrils flared slightly and that lean, hungry look—the one she most associated to Seth—shadowed his face again.
“You hardly need a ‘look’ to get me there,” he declared grimly. He reached across the console and rapidly unfastened her shirt. The cool air of the cab tickled her sensitive nipples when he pulled her T-shirt up her chest unceremoniously. He jerked the fabric of the shirt and her jacket open forcefully, exposing her bare breasts to the dim light and his blazing, possessive stare. “It’s knowing what’s under the disguise that’s making me crazy.”
Gia held her breath as one hand shifted, gliding across her heaving rib cage and caressing the side of her right breast. His other hand rose. He cupped her breasts from below and massaged them firmly in his big hands. She whimpered, as aroused by his deft hands as she was his fixed stare while he watched himself touch her.
“You’re more beautiful than I remembered. Which I would think was an impossibility,” he muttered. All ten of his fingers slid to her nipples. He rubbed at the tightening crests and pinched them lightly. “Such pretty nipples.”
“Seth,” she whispered tensely.
He glanced into her face and something shifted in his expression.
“Are you hurting as much as I was?” he asked, a trace of incredulity in his tone.
She nodded. “I think so, yeah,” she replied with a shaky laugh.
Without another word, he lowered his hand over her ribs and belly and slid it into the opening of her jeans. He continued to watch her face as his fingers slipped beneath her underwear. A spasm of sensation tightened her face as he began to rub her clit.
“Christ, you’re wet.” She moaned as his finger agitated her. The sound of him moving in her lubricated flesh reached her ears . . . his, too, she guessed, because that feral expression tightened his face again as he stared at her. She reached for him, overwhelmed by the intimacy of what was happening, but he backed away slightly, eluding her. “No. I’m going to watch you come.”
His proclamation amplified her arousal. He continued to rub her clit until she burned and clenched her teeth. The sound of him moving in her lubricated flesh was subtle, but seemed to roar in her ears. She bit off a cry when he massaged a breast in his hand and plucked at the nipple with his fingertips, making it pinch tight in pleasure. “That’s right,” he said quietly, leaning forward and nipping at her lips with his. “That’s what I remember. Too well. How responsive you are. There was never really a chance of me being able to resist you, was there?” he said in a harsh tone, as if he were questioning himself and resigning himself to his weakness all at once. She strained toward him, trying to deepen their kiss. She’d be cresting soon—it felt so good.
“No, lean back,” he instructed. She followed his demand, groaning in mounting agony, her head thumping against the back of the seat.
“I burn,” she mumbled.
“I’ll say. Lift your hips for a moment. I want to feel that heat.”
Gritting her teeth, she complied. What he did next made her eyes spring wide. He palmed her entire sex, sending his forefinger into her channel. She gripped onto his shoulders, her mouth gaping open. He moved, shifting his hand, vibrating it very subtly. The pressure on her clit made her eyes spring wide. It took her a dazed second to realize why it felt so good. He was agitating her most sensitive flesh with that half-inch round stone at the bottom of his ring, the one he used so deftly to smooth his makeup applications. The pressure wasn’t hard, but it was firm, precise . . . sublime.
“Feel good?”
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed, stunned by the concise, imperative pleasure. “Yes.”
“What a sweet little pussy,” he growled, his face tight with frustration. “Damn this situation. I want inside this,” he grated out thickly, plunging his finger into her slit for emphasis. He pushed his finger in and out of her as he made tiny vibrations on her clit with the round stone. He watched her face closely, perhaps taking cues from her expression. When she gasped and her head jerked forward, he increased the pressure.
“There. Are you going to come for me?” he asked after a tense moment.
She had no choice. Her fingers sank into the dense muscle of his shoulders. He pinched at her nipple as his hand continued the small, but tense and fast movements between her thighs. “Answer me,” he demanded, the stone’s pressure and speed on her clit optimal.
“Yes. Oh—God yes.” She shuddered as the first wave of climax struck her. Pleasure pounded through her. She cried and his lips were on hers, as if to capture her bliss.
“Shhh,” he soothed when he lifted his mouth a moment later and she shook. He gave her nipple one last taut caress and transferred his hand to her shoulder. Leaning closer, he spread his hand at her back and kissed her lips greedily while she whimpered. He kept stimulating her, nursing her through her climax, his big hand absorbing her shudders. After a mindless moment, she gasped and tilted her head forward, her forehead bumping against his.
For a moment, their breaths mingled as she panted, and his hand began to slow between her thighs.
Finally, he lifted his hand from her sex, dragging his palm over her heaving belly, his fingertips leaving a trail of wetness on her skin. He stroked her sensitive sides with both hands, his touch soothing and exciting her at once. He cupped both of her breasts and his head lowered.
She stared out of the front windshield onto a star-filled desert sky, while Seth held up her breasts and buried his face between the flesh. He turned his head, his whiskers pleasantly chafing her sensitive skin. He kissed and stroked and sucked her nipples with a breathtaking sweetness. Her lungs grew tight as she reached up and delved her fingers into his smooth, thick hair, the moment sweet and taut and almost painfully arousing, despite the fact that she’d just come.
He kissed a damp nipple and laved it with a warm tongue. “Are you tired?” she heard him ask before he surrounded the crest with his lips and applied a suction that made her clamp her legs closed to alleviate the pressure growing there.
“Tired?” she asked incredulously. “Are you kidding?”
He lifted his head slowly. His face was shadowed but she saw the glint of his eyes. “Because if you’re not tired, I’d rather push through.”
“You would?”
“Now that this has happened once,” she sensed him glance down at her bared torso, “do you want it to happen again?”
His deep voice echoed in her ears.
“You mean . . . just while we’re on this escape mission?” she asked wryly. But Seth’s serious expression didn’t flinch. He nodded.
“Yes. I mean . . . I think so,” she said honestly. She wanted to do things like skydive someday, too, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be nervous as all hell and having second thoughts standing on the edge of that plane, considering a free fall to earth. “Do you?”
The two simple words sounded very vulnerable to her, hanging in the air between them, exposed. His head tilted downward. Her naked skin prickled with awareness at his stare.
“I can’t imagine not touching you, now that I have. I’d rather get to a place that I know you’re safe, though, before . . . indulging.”
A spike of excitement went through her at his words.
“You can think about it? While we’re on the road?” he asked with a pointed glance when she didn’t answer immediately. She swallowed thickly and nodded. He was asking her if she wanted to indulge in phenomenal, no-strings-attached sex while they were on the lam together for the next few weeks. She thought she knew her answer, but maybe he was right. She shouldn’t decide when her flesh still sang from his touch and the scent of Seth and sex filled her nose.