He had another client’s case to wrap up in the next few days before he could devote all of his attention to Jane, but he was beginning to suspect that the danger to her was real and immediate, that whoever was stalking her had a long-range plan, and that he would be patient in carrying it through. The book was just a taste of things to come.
But instead of viewing the threat with the clinical detachment he usually felt, he had to admit that Jane was a different kind of client, who evoked totally different emotions in him. He wanted to go to her and comfort her, wrap his arms around her and kiss away all her tension. He wanted to protect her in an altogether male way, by first comforting her with his body, and then defending her with every resource he had.
For now, he needed to get his head focused on the task at hand—installing her security system, but all his male instincts were pulling him in a different direction…toward Jane.
JANE LEANED against the wall and stared at the boxes in the hallway, the boxes she’d intended to unpack today. Instead, she felt like curling up in bed, or jogging ten miles, or maybe eating an entire box of Twinkies. If she’d had a boyfriend—if she’d gotten up the nerve by now to let Brad know how she felt about him—then she could have called him. She could have curled up in his protective arms and let him chase her fears away with hot, slow kisses and other, even hotter, even slower pursuits.
Instead, she had a security consultant with an attitude—one who hated her book, no less. Jane caught herself chewing on her left thumbnail, suddenly engaging in a bad habit she’d broken years ago. Not a good sign. She expelled a ragged sigh and headed for the kitchen.
After searching the pantry, she confirmed her fear that there wasn’t a Twinkie to be found. So that left what—curling up in bed? She refused to let Luke see how scared she really was.
Being alone right now felt lousy anyway, so she opted against an emergency trip to the grocery store and instead went to see if Luke could use any help. Following the sounds of hammering in the living room, she found him lying on the floor with his head inside a heating duct, wires scattered around him. She couldn’t help but admire his hard chest, his lean waistline and hips, his well-muscled thighs, sprawled out for her perusal.
“Need any help?”
“Not really. I’m just running some wire.”
“Oh.”
She was absolutely not going to let her gaze linger on the sliver of skin exposed where Luke’s T-shirt had come out of his pants. And she definitely wasn’t going to look any lower, to the bulge of flesh that she’d already seen, that she’d already gripped, hot and pulsing, in her bare palm.
No, she was just going to turn around and walk right back out of the room. Ignore the heat that throbbed between her legs. Ignore any stupid notion of what might happen if she let Luke try to prove her wrong about sex.
But then he pushed himself out of the heating duct and looked up at her with those inscrutable brown eyes. He smiled a half smile as he reclined back on his elbows.
“You were just checking me out, weren’t you?”
Jane’s first instinct was to protest mightily, but that’s exactly what he expected her to do. If she knew anything about men, she knew that the best way to keep them on their toes was to do the unexpected.
She fought her embarrassment to present him a neutral, even blasé, expression. “You are the hired help, right?”
“So you don’t deny it?”
“Don’t feel too flattered. I also stop to appreciate the guy who mows the lawn.”
“But you’ve never invited him to bed.”
“I’ve never invited you to bed, either.”
“Because you’re afraid.” He pushed himself up off the floor and began rummaging through his toolbox.
“Afraid? Right.” Why did it feel like he was reading her mind? “I’m afraid of being horribly disappointed. Most guys with a tool like yours are so impressed with themselves they never bother learning what to do with it.”
He peered over his shoulder at her, one eyebrow quirked. “A tool like mine?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You never would have stood in my kitchen buck naked from the waist down if you didn’t think you were well-hung.”
A smile played on his lips, and if she weren’t mistaken, she’d swear he was fighting back laughter. “Nice act, but I’m not fooled.”
“What?”
“You’re just afraid of being wrong.”
Jane felt all the blood that had been pulsing between her legs race straight to her temples. She wasn’t afraid of being wrong, was she? Didn’t she care most about the truth, about understanding it and helping other people understand? Was she battling her sexual feelings just to support her relationship theories, or because she really believed they were true?
Suddenly, nothing made sense.
She’d written a book that made people angry enough to deface it and break into her car to give it back to her. Was that because it told the unpopular truth or because it was flawed? Or just because she happened to have one seriously unbalanced reader? She felt her knees wobbling, and she unlocked them to keep from passing out. For the first time, she wondered if maybe it was possible…maybe she really was wrong.
“What do you think would happen if we slept together?” she heard herself ask, unsure how the question had even formed in her mind, let alone on her lips.
He turned to face her and gave her an odd look. “Babe, if you don’t know that, you’re not much of a relationship expert.”
“No, I mean, the aftereffects. Do you think it would somehow leave us happier, healthier people? Do you think our relationship would be improved somehow—what?”
Luke slid his gaze down the length of her, heating her body from top to bottom. “All of the above.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Jane felt her conscience tugging at her. She knew she was being led down a slippery slope, but she somehow couldn’t resist following at the moment. She wanted to feel herself sliding, falling, tumbling head over heels…But into what?
“I’m not, but I’m willing to take a chance. The only way I’ve ever gotten anything worth having in life is by taking risks.”
“Taking risks in your sex life is never a good idea.”
“You drive a car, right? And I’ll bet you wear a seat belt?”
Jane nodded, trying not to roll her eyes at the surely strained metaphor to come.
“Every time you get into a car, you take a risk, but you put on the seat belt to minimize the risk. Sex is no different. You could walk everywhere you go to avoid risks, but you’d never get very far, and you’d miss out on a lot of great trips.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out. Had she really been missing out on lots of great trips all these years? Had her avoidance of risks kept her walking around the same boring neighborhood over and over? Would having sex with Luke take her somewhere she’d never gone before?
Suddenly all her wiseass comebacks disappeared from her head. She probably could have argued with his logic, but…
She didn’t want to.
Instead, she wanted to forget about being Jane Langston, author of The Sex Factor, the book that had made half the men in America hate her. She wanted to do something crazy, something that would make her forget for a little while why Luke was installing a new security system in her house. She wanted to take a wild ride in a fast car without knowing the destination.
She blinked slowly as her mind grasped exactly what she was about to do, and out of her mouth came a statement she could barely recognize as her own. “Let’s do it.”
“Do it?” He gave her a look that let her know he wasn’t interested in playing games.
“You’ve convinced me, okay? I’m willing to take a risk, see what happens.”
“You sure you mean that? Maybe you’re just talking crazy because of the incident earlier.”
“I’m totally serious—maybe crazy, too, but totally serious.”
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He took a step closer to Jane, and her panties got wet. He took another step and their bodies were nearly touching. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Maybe you should wait until you’re not feeling so emotional before you decide to sleep with me.”
They were so close Jane had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. But he was staring at her mouth as though he meant to kiss her any second now. His actions were contradicting his words, so she decided what he needed was a little more encouragement in the right direction.
So what if she was acting rashly? Emotionally. Like a woman who desperately needed a little distraction, a little companionship. That’s exactly what she was. To hell with the repercussions. Right now she just wanted to forget everything.
Jane slid her hand around Luke’s neck and pressed her lips to his, pressed her body against him. She coaxed him into a hot, frenzied kiss that did indeed wipe away her every last worry. What, exactly, had she been worried about, anyway?
He danced his tongue around hers, slid his hands over her backside and gripped her, pressed her pelvis into his erection. Jane clung to him, tasted him, let her mind and body pretend that he was someone who cared for her, someone like Bradley, with whom she could spend a lifetime and not just a night.
When he lifted her up and carried her into the bedroom, then tossed her onto the bed and climbed on top of her like a wild predator, Jane forgot even the name that had been living on her lips for years… Bradley who?
Sunlight poured in the window, creating a warm haze in the room that seemed perfect for Sunday-morning sex. She closed her eyes and reveled in her own uncontrollable desire as Luke stripped her of her jeans, pushed her sweater up above her breasts and over her head, then rid her of her underwear and bra.
She heard herself emitting little gasps of pleasure when he found her breasts with his mouth and sucked first gently, then hungrily. He pushed them together and teased each nipple with his tongue, massaging her flesh with his hands, making her feel full, ripe, completely, utterly female.
Then one of his hands was between her legs, coaxing her from damp to dripping wet in a few expert strokes. He slipped one finger inside her, then two, then three, and Jane cried out at the sweet burning of her flesh stretching to accommodate him. He found some insanely sensitive spot inside her and coaxed her into a wave of pleasure so sudden and strong that she couldn’t begin to slow its approach.
Kneeling between her legs, he found her clit with his other hand while his fingers still worked their magic inside her, and he watched her melt in his hands. His eyes heavily lidded, his gaze remained fixed on Jane’s until the freight train of her orgasm came roaring through. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and arched her back as waves and waves of pleasure rocked her.
She heard herself crying out like a wild woman and wondered if the voice was really hers. Jane, who had quiet, respectable sex with sensitive, respectable guys, didn’t scream and buck when she made love. She purred, she murmured, she sighed, but she didn’t do what she was helpless to stop at that moment.
The waves passed finally, and Jane slumped into a mass of quivering flesh on the bed. She was barely aware of Luke’s fingers slipping out of her, of his damp fingertips gliding up her belly, over her rib cage, around her torso. He lay on top of her and pressed his body against her, then nuzzled his face into her neck.
“You liked that?”
“I want you inside me,” was all she could think to say. “Now.”
He raised up on his elbows and pinned her with his dark gaze. “No games, right? You really want this?”
“Yes,” she breathed as she pushed his shirt up and explored the hot, smooth landscape of his chest.
Forgetting her every inhibition, she was up and undressing him. She was taking the condom he withdrew from his wallet and ripping it open with her teeth. She was climbing on top of him, enjoying the view of him uninterrupted by clothing. She was sliding the condom on as if she’d done it a thousand times, not just observed the practice from across the bed.
Then, without ceremony, she mounted him and cried a wild animal cry at the feel of his erection as she took the full length of it into her body. Not even his three large fingers had prepared her for the feel of his size, stretching her and showing her body its sexual limits. Now she understood, in a flash of coherence—size did matter, after all. There were things a hammer could do far more effectively than a Q-tip.
She began to move, and little aftershocks of her earlier orgasm shook her, sent her into a fast rocking rhythm that felt more right than anything else she could imagine.
Luke gripped her hips and stilled her. “Let’s take it slow, babe. I want this to last longer than a minute.” He wore a private smile that make Jane feel like they’d been lovers for years.
And then he raised her hips, positioning her so that he could do all the moving while she hovered above him. He began to work himself inside her so slowly, so exquisitely different than the pace she wanted, that Jane had no choice but to cry out at the sweet torture of it. She gasped and writhed and tried to free her hips from his grasp, but he held firm, and continued his slow pace.
When Jane stopped fighting it, she let her head fall back as she learned to appreciate the pleasures of denial. This, she decided, was a million times better than chocolate. Like no pleasure she could have imagined.
Luke traced her nipples with his fingertips, explored her flesh, then, as he increased the pace, he tugged at her nipples ever so gently, applying just enough pressure to drive her wild again.
She began to rock her hips in time with his, urging them closer to the edge, but then he pulled back again. He toppled her in one swift movement and pinned her hands at her sides, pinned her body to the bed with his.
“No, no,” he whispered. “No more fast finishes. Today we take it nice and slow.”
Today. Implying that there would be other days, possibly nights. Possibly many. A giddy sensation rose up in her chest.
She squirmed against his restraint and he freed her hands.
“Does it turn you on to be restrained?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered without thinking twice. Who was this wild sex fiend she’d suddenly become? The old Jane Langston would never have admitted an interest in bondage. She’d have labeled it demeaning or jaded or warped.
Whatever. All she knew right now was that Luke could ask her to do just about anything, maybe dress up as a French maid and pretend to dust his house, and she’d consider it a turn-on.
“I’ll remember that for later,” he said, as he nudged himself between her legs.
She spread herself wide for him, wrapped her legs around his hips, arched her back as he penetrated her again and this time began to move inside her at just the pace she longed for. Fast and hard.
He began to gasp and cry out along with her as they neared the edge, and then he stopped.
Jane opened her eyes to find him studying her with a wicked look. He had no intention of letting her come again so soon. No, he was going to make her work for it this time, she suspected, and she decided two could play at that game.
Focusing all her energy between her legs, she contracted her inner muscles around him, as tight as she could, then released. She did it again, and again. Beads of sweat broke out on Luke’s forehead. He closed his eyes and his entire body stilled as she worked her muscles.
And then he began to thrust into her again. This time though, he moved with less control, with more of the frenzied wild animal lust that Jane herself felt. She clung to him, and they muffled their moans with deep, exploring kisses, until somehow they worked themselves off the bed and onto the floor.
Luke managed to break the fall so that she felt only the slightest discomfort as they landed on the thickly padded white carpet of her bedroom floor. She gave the briefest thought to rug burns until she realized that they’d taken half the covers on the bed with them.
He continued their lovemaking nearly uninterrupted until Jane felt herself quaking, c
oming so close… He stopped again, his own gasps and perspiration making it clear that he was just as close to release as she was. But he possessed a superhuman sense of self-control that Jane, in her wild-animal mode, couldn’t hope to replicate. She clawed at his back, writhed and moaned, locking him against her with her legs.
After he planted the softest of kisses on her lips, he whispered, “I want to taste you now.”
Pleasant as that sounded, Jane couldn’t imagine him withdrawing, taking away that heavenly sensation of being filled by him.
“Not now—”
But he’d already escaped, and then he lifted her back onto the bed and positioned her bottom just at the edge of it. If she hadn’t been quaking and senseless, she might have mustered more of a fight. In her present state though, Jane could only utter the slightest protest as he propped her feet on his shoulders and plunged his tongue into her.
“Oh,” she cried. And then she forgot whatever protest she’d considered making.
He coaxed, he tasted, he teased her clit with his tongue as he explored her again with his fingers. He worked a magic so exquisite that Jane cried out with even greater abandon than before. Surely the neighbors would hear her and decide she was either in serious trouble or had the best sex life in the neighborhood.
And then he did it. He let her fall over the edge as he massaged her with his tongue and fingers. She felt herself bucking and heard herself moaning, all the while her body at the mercy of his, under the control of an orgasm more intense than she’d imagined possible.
Several minutes later, she lay tucked in his arms, not sure if she’d actually blacked out or had just been rendered so senseless that she couldn’t remember how they’d gotten in that position. Luke kissed her gently on the forehead, on the nose, on the cheek. He traced her belly button with his free hand and pressed his thigh against her still-throbbing clitoris.
If she’d been hoping to impress him, she’d surely blown it. Here she was basking in the afterglow of her second orgasm and he hadn’t even come once yet. And if she didn’t feel so absolutely weak at the moment, she’d hop right up and do something about it.
What A Girl Wants (Harlequin Blaze) Page 9