Out of This World

by Jill Shalvis

  Still straddling him, I lifted up on my knees and straightened a leg, trying to get my pj bottoms off, all in tune with his low, rough groan. The sound inspired me, drove me on. Unfortunately, with my desire and hunger leading the way, all finesse went out the window. So did grace. I did get my thigh out, and then bent my knee and—

  “Oomph,” Kellan said as I nailed him.

  Yeah, there was the way to seduce a man: knee him in the nuts. “Oh my God. Did I get your—”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” I ran my hands down his belly, lower, cupping him.

  Another sound escaped him, this one not of pain. “I’m okay.”

  “Whew.” But I didn’t move my hands. He was aroused, hugely so, and I have to admit, I couldn’t get enough of that either. I struggled with my pj’s for another moment, before Kellan’s hands held me still. Wrapping one arm around my waist, he effortlessly hoisted me up, freeing my leg.

  I took advantage of the freedom by wrapping my fingers tighter around him and stroking the very tip of him over my damp flesh.

  “Jesus.”

  Then I let the very tip of him inside.

  Gripping my hips, his head fell back against the couch. His eyes were shut, his jaw tight, the tendons in his neck standing out in bold relief, much like the part of him I held in my hands right this very minute. It excited me, knowing what I did to him, and as unbelievable as it seemed, given our precarious, unknown situation, I was so turned on I couldn’t stop squirming.

  “Look again,” he demanded, jaw tight.

  “Nothing,” I gasped, wondering how it was he managed to keep his wits, when I couldn’t keep mine.

  The darkness continued to swirl all around us, creating that sense of intimacy that felt startling. Before Kel, it’d been a while since I’d been with anybody. Maybe yesterday I could have attributed some of my urgency to that most basic human need of being held, swept away, loved.

  Comforted.

  But, now I knew it was more than that; it was Kel. Kel did this to me. I’d already learned he was an incredibly earthy and giving lover. His kisses were heart-stopping, as were his roughened hands, busy exploring every inch of me, urging me even closer, so that my world became a blur of bare skin, rough sighs and a building hunger I needed assuaged.

  He stroked a hand down my belly, then lower, lazily rasping a thumb just where I needed it, making me rock my hips against him with a dark, needy sound.

  “Good?” he whispered.

  “So good.”

  He kissed me again, keeping his fingers in tune with the kiss, until my world shrank, until nothing else mattered. The sound he made when he sank a finger into me and found me so wet nearly sent me over the edge all by itself.

  “See anyone yet?”

  “Kel.”

  “Check. Please?”

  Not easy, but I tried. I could still see nothing, and when I said so, he rewarded me with more of those mind-blowing strokes of his thumb, over and over, slowly first, then speeding as my hips began to pump, when I finally lost it, coming completely undone all over him. “Oh my God,” I gasped, clinging to him as the shudders took me. “God.” I sagged down over him, forehead to his shoulder, panting for breath in his ear.

  Beneath me, he was still hard, gloriously so, and I lifted my head, finding myself a little unnerved and embarrassed by how fast I’d gone off.

  He kissed my shoulder, my neck. “Better?” he murmured.

  Did he think that was it, that I’d just needed the edge taken off, and we were done? Not by a long shot, big guy. “More.”

  Game, he slid his hands back down my body, but I shook my head, lifting up, wrapping my fingers around him and then sinking back down so that he slid deep inside me.

  Instantly I was back on the edge. He hadn’t even begun to move, and already my toes were curling, my body tightening. I rocked my hips and gasped in pure pleasure.

  “Rach—” He gripped my hips hard, holding me still, when I didn’t want to be still. “Don’t—”

  But he was filling me to bursting, and the heat and joy of it took over. My insides trembled as much as my fingers when I cupped his jaw, stroking his chest with palms that felt hot and achy. He was just so magnificent, I couldn’t stop. I ran my fingers down to his abs. I loved touching him there, loved the sound he made, the way his breathing went all ragged, as if he couldn’t control himself.

  “If you move,” he grated out, “I’ll—”

  “If you don’t move, I’ll—”

  “No, Christ! I’m not—” He groaned. “We can’t—”

  I rocked my hips.

  Swearing, he laced his fingers through mine, as if he couldn’t handle my touching him, my name another rough rumble from his chest, as he eased my legs farther apart by spreading his.

  Now I couldn’t move, but it also caused him to thrust up even higher within me, and I clutched at him, gasping in pleasure.

  “Oh fuck,” he said in a strained voice. “Stay still.”

  Was he kidding? Stay still, with him buried to the hilt inside of me. It was all too much, seeing him sprawled beneath me, jaw tight, muscles quivering, flesh and hard sinew damp, breath coming in short, choppy bursts…”Kel.”

  “No condom,” he ground out.

  How bad was it that I’d completely forgotten? Very bad. Very, very bad! “Why don’t you carry condoms, damn it?”

  “I did! Yours. We used it.”

  “Why didn’t you take two?”

  His laugh was self-deprecating. “Because never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d need that one, much less more. But believe me, when we get out of here, I’m going to carry a damn box around for the rest of my life. Now please God, Rach, get off.”

  “But you didn’t get to—”

  “No, but I’m going to—”

  He sounded so desperate that I was overcome by an unexpected blinding rush of affection. Slipping off him caused another ragged groan from his lips, but I just whispered “shh” and sank to my knees between his thighs.

  “Rach—”

  “Shh,” I said again, and put my lips to his hip.

  And then a few inches over to the right.

  His head thunked back against the couch, his fingers tunneling into my hair, as if he couldn’t help himself. “You don’t have to—Jesus.”

  I’d moved my mouth again.

  “We need to get up.” His voice was weak now, a mere whisper.

  “Hmm.” I loved the taste of him. “But you’re already up, Kel.”

  “Funny.”

  “I try.” My hair fell over my shoulder and stroked his belly, making him jump a little and his muscles quiver.

  The power of that—making this long, rangy, leanly muscled man quiver—rushed through me. Suddenly I felt like a superhero, like I could do anything.

  And what I wanted was to drive him right off the edge of sanity, the way he’d done me.

  “Rach.”

  “Right here.” I took my tongue on a little tour, and his fingers tightened in my hair. He said something completely unintelligible, the rough sound turning me on just as much as what I was doing to him did.

  “You need to look out for—”

  “We’re okay. I’ve got you,” I promised, trying to give him back some of the security he’d given me.

  And as he went over, he held on to me, the both of us lost. Just as together we were found.

  As simple and as terrifying as that.

  We were still breathing like absused racehorses when he stroked a damp strand of hair from my cheek. “Every time we do that, it gets harder.”

  I stood up and looked for my camisole. The last I’d seen it, it’d been sailing across the room. “Thank God for hard.”

  “I don’t want to joke about this.”

  Where the hell was my top? “What do you want?”

  “You.”

  I turned back to him. “You just had me.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I did kno
w. Just as I was beginning to know how deep my feelings for him really were, despite my hang-ups.

  But I really liked how things were right now. The close friendship. The new benefits. Everything that made a good relationship, without the word “relationship” attached to it, so that nothing could be taken away.

  Not one single thing.

  But I looked into his gorgeous eyes, saw the wanting, the yearning, and felt my heart crack, because he didn’t—wouldn’t—understand.

  Proving it, he stood up with a long sigh, his shirt wrinkled, pants opened, looking unfairly sexy.

  As he’d been doing all his life, he shoved his fingers through his hair in lieu of a comb. “Look, next time, well, there shouldn’t be a next time.”

  My stomach clenched. “So you’re saying what? You don’t want to see me anymore?”

  “Not if we’re only going to play at this thing.”

  “But—”

  I broke off at the sudden pounding of a fist on the door. “Omigod.” I’d forgotten to keep looking!

  “Here.” Kellan tossed me my pj bottoms. “Goddamnit, I knew it.”

  “Really?” I hopped on one leg while shoving my other into the bottoms. “You knew it, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew we were going to come to the Twilight Zone and get hit by lightning, then locked in an attic by a couple of crazies whose favorite words are ‘the swap’ and ‘abilities.’”

  He threw me my camisole, which had ended up on the floor. I caught it in the face. I pulled it away and scowled at him as he buttoned up his jeans and grabbed the gun.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  I opened my mouth, but he clapped his hand over it and pulled me flush to his body. The body that had just sent me into screaming ecstasy and back. “Shh.”

  The pounding came again, making the door shudder.

  Hell, the walls and the floor shuddered, too. And in spite of being mad and hurt, I allowed myself to cling to Kel.

  “We know you’re in there!” yelled a terrifyingly gruff and angry voice. “Open up!”

  Whoever it was, he was furious, and I somehow managed to focus on the door—

  “Uh-oh,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Kellan muttered. “Definitely uh-oh.”

  “What do we do?”

  “You open the fuck up, that’s what you do!” yelled the scary voice from the other side of the door. “Open now, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Kellan tried to see in the dark. “We need a better place to hide.”

  “You think?”

  “Any more of those handy closets-that-aren’t-really-closets around?”

  How he remained calm, while the hair on the back of my neck was standing straight up and my knees and teeth were knocking together, was beyond me. I searched the room and tried to focus.

  But a gunshot rang in the night, shattering both the unnatural quiet and the bolt on the door, not to mention shaving a few years off my life.

  Chapter 20

  The shot-up door swung open to reveal the two men I’d seen stealing the cookies, both of them just as huge as I’d thought, and just as beefy, each carrying enough armor to free a third-world country from terrorism. Kellan could see all this as well thanks to the lantern that one of them wore on his head, the light in the center of his forehead like the eye of a cyclops.

  I’m pretty sure my life passed before my eyes, but since I was also seeing gray spots and thought I might throw up, I really couldn’t be too sure of anything.

  Kellan hadn’t revealed his gun. There wasn’t much point, with all those big bad-boy guns in our faces. He shoved me behind him, then managed to effortlessly hold me there despite my attempts otherwise.

  Didn’t he know I cared about him every bit as much as he cared about me, even if I’d been a bit stingy with my feelings?

  And I had been stingy. I hated that about myself, and I promised God and the saints, and anyone else who could read my thoughts, that I wasn’t going to hold back.

  Not ever again.

  “Who are you?” Kel demanded of the two men. He’d managed to get his jeans buttoned, but he still wore no shirt, no socks, no shoes—nothing to protect himself.

  Who was this brave man standing between me and certain death, and why did he have to be brave now, when it was stupid to be so? “Kel—”

  He somehow continued to keep me behind him in a way that prevented me from budging. But I could see, and what I did see was enough to turn my blood to ice.

  The thugs wore old, ratty cargos, the khaki pants dirty and grimy, as if they’d never met a washing machine they liked. Their shirts had fared little better, both black T’s and as torn and disgusting as the pants. Their arms were littered with tattoos, markings that made no sense to me. The one with the light on his head wore long, Rastafarian-style hair; the other was as bald as a cue ball. Both sported ragged headbands and an overall I-haven’t-showered-this-year scent.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Curly said to Moe in a voice that sounded as if he’d eaten glass shards for lunch. One of his front teeth sparkled like a diamond. “We’ll take ’em up the river, and do ’em there.”

  “That’s a stupid idea,” Moe said.

  Curly growled. I swore dust rose up from his dreadlocks. “Are you calling me stupid?”

  “Something wrong with your hearing?”

  Curly turned his gun from us to his partner in crime, and bared his teeth. “Take it back.”

  “Nope.”

  “Take. It. Back.”

  “Or you’ll what?” Moe sneered.

  “I’ll tell Mom. Now say you’re sorry you said I was stupid.”

  “Fine. I’m sorry you’re stupid.”

  Steam came out of Curly’s ears. “You’re going to pay for that.”

  Moe didn’t look too scared. He was too busy trying to catch a good glimpse of me behind Kellan. Finally he gestured with his extremely lethal-looking gun. “You,” he said. “Hot stuff. Come out from behind there.”

  Kellan’s hand tightened on me, but he needn’t have worried. I was not anxious to come out from behind him.

  “Now,” Moe said.

  “No,” Kellan said.

  Moe leveled his gun at Kellan’s head. “How about now?”

  Terror struck me right through the heart, and I backed out of Kellan’s grip, not an easy feat, since he didn’t want to let me go. “Kel, please,” I whispered. “Don’t give them an excuse to shoot you.”

  Jaw tense enough to shatter, Kellan turned his head and kept his eyes on me. “No closer,” he commanded.

  Not a problem. My feet had turned to concrete and weren’t going anywhere.

  “You.” Moe gestured to Kellan. “Back up.”

  Kellan didn’t move.

  Moe did something to his gun that sounded like it was now cocked and ready to blast a hole through Kel’s head.

  Kellan backed up a few feet and put his hand behind him, where I knew he had the gun tucked in his waistband.

  We couldn’t have touched if we wanted to, which I realized was exactly the goal of our company.

  “Pretty,” Curly said as he looked me over, from my bare feet to my camisole, which was fairly inconsequential, as I’d not had the chance to put the sweatshirt back on.

  “Leave her alone,” Kellan said to Curly when he came close enough that I could smell his rank breath.

  Yeah, leave me alone. Fear had given me a chill, and I crossed my arms over myself to cover my breasts, which had Moe letting out a low, appreciative laugh.

  “Nice,” he said, and nudged my arms with the blunt tip of his gun. “Drop ’em.”

  Kel pulled his gun and aimed it right at Moe. “Don’t touch her.”

  Curly simply leveled his gun on Kel. “Drop it, or she dies.”

  Kel didn’t move.

  Curly stepped closer to me, and aimed right between my eyes.

  Kel, looking tortured at the choice he had, which was no choice at all, dropped his gun. />
  I hugged myself harder. I could see Curly’s heart thudding, which surprised me, since I would have sworn he didn’t have a heart. I could also see other reactions going on in his body, which made my parts shrivel up and go ewww.

  “Drop ’em,” he said again, not nearly as nicely.

  “Don’t, Rach,” Kel said, and Curly hit him in the face with the gun.

  Kel fell. I cried out and lurched toward him, but Moe shifted his gun back to me, and I went still.

  Moe gave me a slow smile that made me feel sick. “Now,” he said, running his tongue over his disgusting teeth. “Where were we? Oh yeah, drop your arms.”

  Before I could, Kel pushed up to his knees and swiped his bleeding mouth with the back of his hand. “Touch her, and die,” he said.

  “How about we touch her, and you die?” Curly asked conversationally.

  “You can’t kill me; I’ve got what you want.” Kel met the guy’s gaze straight on, and a chill went through me at the look on his face.

  He was prepared to die. For me.

  Oh God. “We’ll give you whatever you want,” I said quickly. “Just don’t hurt him again.”

  Curly’s eyes lit with greed. “See, now that’s what I’m talking about. Some cooperation.” He eyed me up and down and then back up again, eyebrow raised in a dare. Should I go on and torture Kel, his silence said, or are you going to drop your arms?

  Since I was fresh out of tricks, I dropped my arms. He spent a long moment leering at my hardened nipples, until Curly jabbed him in the back with his gun. “Move, you’re hogging the view.”

  Kellan’s jaw was tight enough to shatter, the cords in his neck standing up in bold relief, as the two of them looked their fill.

  I didn’t know what to do. My stomach felt funny, my legs incapable of holding me. For the first time, I understood true terror.

  Kellan was looking at me, mouth still bleeding, his gaze filled with everything he was thinking. Fear for my safety. Frustration that he couldn’t do anything about it. Anger that he’d allowed this to happen. His heart was speeding up, too. My biggest fear was that he’d do something stupid and get himself killed.