by Cindy Gerard
She couldn’t believe she was being the aggressor, that she was doing the seducing. But she believed her gut. Believed this was right.
And she believed the conviction that she’d lacked for a very long time. So long, she’d forgotten what a potent drug it could be.
When her legs bumped up against the bed, she released his hands. Eyes locked on his, she reached for the hem of her sweater, then lifted it over her head.
He sucked in a breath as his gaze lowered from her face to her bare breasts. “Jesus. You don’t play fair.”
She cupped his cheek in her palm, wet her lips and beckoned him with a breathless whisper. “Do things to me, Luke. Do things that will make us both forget everything going on outside this room. Tell me—”
“Enough,” he growled. His eyes were dark with desire as he lifted her, tossed her onto the bed, then followed her down. “You had me at potato.”
13
Stick a fork in him, he was done.
Done talking. Done trying to do the right thing, be the right man, make the right choices. Jesus, he wasn’t a saint. Sinner came much closer to fitting the bill. And she made him want to be bad.
So he was going to be.
He was going to be damn bad.
It was all about indulgence now. All about sinking into this soft, sexy, blow-his-ever-lovin’-mind woman.
He didn’t remember shucking his clothes or dragging off the rest of hers. Had a vivid, visceral memory, however, of her lifting the sweater over her head, of her standing before him, her breasts full and perfect and bare, her small brown nipples tight and erect and asking to be sucked.
No, he was no saint.
Especially when her dark eyes implored him and she begged him to do things to her.
Mother of God.
They were both naked now. The bed was fresh washed linen and softly creaking. Her skin was as hot as fire and so freaking smooth. He couldn’t touch her enough. Couldn’t taste her enough. Couldn’t kiss and lick and suck enough, fast enough, deep enough.
Not enough for her either, apparently, because when he pressed a wet, scraping kiss against her rib cage, just under her right breast, she reared up with a catlike sound, shoved him to his back, and, turning the tables, straddled his hips.
Heart racing, breath ragged, he sensed her need to dominate this round. So he lay spread-eagle beneath her, forcing his hands to stay still—clenched, but still—beside his head and watch her. Just watch her move above him.
She was the stuff of fantasies.
He groaned deep in his chest as she ground her pelvis into his, and every muscle, sinew, and tendon in his body clenched into tight steel bands. She smiled in triumph when the heat and the wetness between her thighs pulsed against his cock and it twitched with the need to be inside her.
But she wanted to torture him a little more first. Fine. It couldn’t kill him to indulge her, right? Or . . . oh, God. Maybe it could.
He sucked in a harsh breath when she planted her palms on either side of his shoulders, then lowered her head and kissed him . . . openmouthed, seeking tongue, all hot and wet and hungry. And when that amazing mouth moved lower to nip and kiss him along his jaw, then lower, to cover and lightly bite his right nipple, he grabbed handfuls of sheet and clung like he was a fingerhold away from falling into a bottomless abyss.
But when she sat back on her heels and took him in her hand, then bent to run her tongue slowly, lovingly, over the ridge of the scar bisecting his body, he totally, totally lost it.
He reached down, cupped her head in his hands, and dragged her mouth back to his. He feasted on her lips, then her tongue, feeding his own hunger, then gasped when she broke the kiss and offered him her breast.
He lifted his head off the pillow and latched on. And he wasn’t gentle. She cried out when he nipped her, moaned low and long when he opened his mouth wide around her areola, flicked the tip of her nipple with his tongue, then sucked his fill.
Velvet and nectar.
Woman and desire.
He drowned in every facet of her as he skated his hands over the gentle round of her hips, then filled a palm with the weight of one perfect breast, molding her and shaping her with his fingers before turning his head to give attention to the other.
Her breathless sighs and earthy gasps fueled his desire for more as she let him know how much she loved it. Loved his mouth, loved the suction, the wild, wet heat.
Do things to me.
He was just getting started.
Gripping her waist with both hands, he lifted her up, his mouth never relinquishing its hold on her nipple, and flipped her to her back.
Her eyes were half closed as he knelt between her legs; his hands looked huge and dark and rough against her skin as he stroked from her knees up her thighs to that part of her he had every intention of owning before they left this bed.
Her skin was satin smooth there at the apex, her pubic curls dark and silky. He watched her face as he slipped a finger inside, groaned when she closed her eyes, clenched around him and arched her back, pressing her head into the bedding.
Need shot through him like a Tomahawk missile, lightning fast, fireball hot. Homed in on an irreversible target. And when she opened wider, trusting, vulnerable, inviting, he damn near exploded.
He gripped her hips and dragged her to the edge of the mattress, then he dropped to his knees on the floor.
She made a keening sound as he parted her thighs and, careful of her injured knee, hooked her legs over his shoulders.
“Yes?” he breathed against that sexy mole on her inner thigh.
“Oh . . . God . . . yesss . . .”
He was already seeking that nest of downy curls, his tongue already stroking the core of her sex, his mouth already open and feasting.
She bucked against his tongue, gasped his name as he suckled, spurred on as much by her taste and scent as by the way she writhed against him, fisted her hands in his hair and demanded more. More suction. More pressure. More tongue.
He loved her passion. Almost as much as he loved her taste, and the power of possession. He’d played out this fantasy a hundred times, only in his imagination, he’d been the one doing the begging. He’d been the one pleading for her to let him touch, let him feel, let him see and do and experience the magic of Valentina.
The reality was so painfully sweet he thought he might OD on it. When she convulsed and screamed his name—God he loved that strangled, desperate sound—he eased up, slowed down, let her languish in the riot of sensation, let her glide on the silky rush, and finally catch her breath on the downside of the fall. He reluctantly made himself leave the rich, rare taste of a woman wholly spent, and lay back down on the bed beside her.
Propping himself up on an elbow, he laid his palm over her concave belly and spread his fingers wide. Her flesh quivered beneath his hand, the gold ball in her navel winked between his fingers as she struggled for a steady breath.
Did he still want her? Oh, yeah. Was he rock hard and damn near bursting? Hell, yeah. But he couldn’t make himself move. Couldn’t tear his gaze away from the picture she made lying there. Her breasts were pink and red and wet from his mouth, her thighs were wantonly splayed on the tangled sheets. Moisture from his mouth, from her release, glistened on her silken curls.
“Luke,” she whispered and lifted a very limp hand.
“I’m here, Angelface.”
“Not close enough.” she made a feeble attempt to tug him closer.
“Hold that thought,” he whispered, leaned down to kiss her, then briefly left to get some condoms out of his pack, silently thanking Johnny Duane Reed.
“Bang-bang,” Reed had said with a grin as he’d tucked a packet of condoms into Luke’s hand just as he was about to head out for Peru.
Because it was easier to go along with Reed than cross him and because it was nobody’s business that Luke’s “vacation” would not be spent on a beach or in a bed with some bombshell of the week, but holding medical clinics for the
Quechua, he’d simply stuffed them in his pack.
Yeah, when he got back to B.A., he’d have to thank his teammate.
Right now, though, was all about here. About some unfinished business waiting for him on that bed.
Lord, would you look at her.
He swallowed a huge lump in his throat and stood there, heart skipping like a schoolboy’s. Her eyes were closed. Her black hair fanned like a wash of silk over white linen. One hand rested across a delicate breast. The pretty bead of her nipple peeked out from between her splayed fingers.
“Jesus, you’re beautiful.” The mattress dipped with his weight when he knelt by her hip.
She smiled without opening her eyes. “And you are . . . thorough.”
“Oh, Angelface, you haven’t seen thorough yet.”
As much threat as promise colored his words as he rolled on the condom. As much desire as approval showed in her eyes when she finally opened them and saw the jutting proof that he was just getting started.
She smiled, all mellow and sultry and smug. “You just going to loom over me and make promises, or do you plan to deliver anytime soon?”
He laughed, because damn, she was fun. And damn, she was gorgeous. But when she raised both arms to beckon him, then opened her thighs to welcome him, he sobered like a judge.
“You know,” he said, lowering himself and making a place for himself between her legs, “I’ve wanted to do this since the first time I saw you.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips. “On the train?”
He reached between them, found her swollen and slick and still pulsing with need for him. “On a billboard near Billings, Montana, about a hundred fifty million years ago.”
She gasped and he groaned when he pressed the head of his penis into her opening.
“That’s . . . Oh, God.” She lifted her hips to meet him when he thrust deeper. “That’s a long, long time.”
He was drowning in her. Swollen to the max and stretching the walls of her flesh with the most outrageous friction that bred the most astounding sensations he’d ever, ever, felt.
“Worth. The. Wait,” he ground out, pressing his face into the curve of her neck and gorging himself on the feel of her.
“Stop talking,” she ordered on a thready moan as her arms tightened around his shoulders. “Just . . . move. Please . . . just . . . move.”
She hooked her ankles tightly around his hips and hugged him closer, heightening the sense of urgency thrumming through his body as he pumped deeper, harder, faster.
He couldn’t talk now if she begged him.
He was fully and wholly immersed in her. The wild, sexy sounds she made as she clung and rocked her hips to meet his. The hot, supple body that vibrated with the need for release.
“Pleasssseee,” she hissed against his shoulder, digging her nails into his back.
He lifted his head and clamped his mouth over hers, thrust his tongue inside and mimicked the action of his hips. And still it wasn’t enough. He skimmed a hand roughly down the length of her body, tucked it under her ass and lifted, tilting her hips until the contact was so deep, so penetrating, he was afraid he might hurt her.
“You okay?” he panted and prayed to God she was, because this was . . . oh, man . . . this was heaven. The closest thing to a mystical experience he was ever going to get.
“God, yes. Oh . . . please . . . now!”
He heard her through a fog of raw, primal need. Every nerve in his body was focused on the friction and the fusion; every pleasure point felt magnified a million times as he pumped in and out and their bodies melded into one pulsing, hypersensitized organism, both craving the ultimate release.
He was buried deep, deep in desire, yet he still sensed a change in her breathing, from labored to ragged. The change in her heartbeat, from rapid to wild. The change in her body as she stiffened beneath him, cried out against his shoulder, and clung for life as another orgasm ripped through her.
He tried his damnedest to hold on, to hold out, but her release triggered his own. Immeasurable pleasure ripped through him like a wild, sucking riptide as he plunged one last time, and followed her over the edge into oblivion.
Val lay with her eyes closed, vaguely thinking that she should get up. But her bones had turned to liquid. Her blood had thickened like pudding. And the man who had made her feel like a nymphomaniac had a muscled thigh draped over her hips and a warm hand lazily caressing her left breast.
Wow.
Multiple orgasms.
She turned her head and found him watching her.
He smiled tentatively. “Wow,” he said, echoing her thoughts.
“Yeah,” she agreed and, suddenly feeling a little uneasy, she looked away.
“Several years ago, President Billings made a surprise visit to my base,” Luke said softly. “He pinned a silver star on my uniform for an op I’d been a part of in Iraq.”
Compelled not only by the tone of his voice, but by his words, she turned her head and looked at him.
“Not too long ago,” he went on as he propped himself up on an elbow and smiled into her eyes, “the chief of a remote tribe in the Amazon offered his daughter and a goat in appreciation for helping rid the region of renegade warlords who had been on a raping and killing rampage.”
Where was he going with this?
“On my tenth birthday, my dad handed over the reins to a sweet little buckskin mare that I’d been pining over for an entire year.”
She gave him a quizzical smile. “And you’re telling me this because?”
His warm hand slid to her waist and caressed her.
“Because until a few minutes ago, those were the three most stellar moments in my life.”
Tears stung her eyes at the sweetness of his words, at the sincerity in his eyes.
He laced his fingers with hers, then he kissed her with a tenderness that touched her far deeper than it should have.
And suddenly she was afraid. More afraid than when the train had been attacked. More frightened than when she’d faced the gunmen from the depths of that dark, damp hidey-hole.
She was terrified of the melting warmth spreading through her chest and the ache in her heart that could only mean one thing: She was falling for this man.
Oh, no. This could not happen. She would not open herself to that kind of torment again.
Not even with Luke. Heroic, gentle, sexy, phenomenal Luke.
She quickly blinked back the tears and pasted on a bright smile. Then she set about putting things back in perspective and driving home that what was happening between them was just sex. Just a good time. Nothing more.
“So, you’re comparing me to a presidential commendation and a horse—is that what you’re saying?”
“And a goat. Don’t forget the goat.”
“High praise, indeed.” She rolled away from him and sat up on the edge of the bed.
She had to get some distance from those eyes. Those all-American-boy eyes and that red, white, and blue heart and those twin dimples that just melted her.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said, determined to sound casual.
When he remained silent, she looked back at him over her shoulder. She expected a flirty smile, but he was watching her with a measured look.
“You okay, Angelface?”
No, she was not okay. She was in danger of being devastated by feelings she couldn’t handle, didn’t want, and by the veiled hurt in his eyes. She had to put the skids on this before it went any further.
“Actually, I’m not. I’m a little annoyed with myself. What kind of woman lets a man get away with calling her Angelface?”
He laughed and, looking relieved, tugged her onto her back again. “But I’m not just any man, now, am I?”
No, she conceded as he rolled her beneath him, caught her breast in his mouth and, oh, my God . . . liquid heat shot from her nipple to her core, and just that fast she was aching for him again. Throbbing for him . . . w
et for him as he quickly rolled on another condom, thrust inside her, and took them on another journey to the land that level heads forgot.
14
His mind was officially blown.
Luke’s chest was still heaving, his body sated and depleted, his muscles in a state of outrageously blissful atrophy.
He was either the luckiest sonofabitch on earth . . . or the dumbest. Most likely, both.
He glanced toward the closed bathroom door, then back toward the ceiling. Val had been in there for a good fifteen minutes. Didn’t take a molecular physicist to figure out that there was a lot of post-heat-of-the-moment regret going on behind that door.
His cheeks puffed out on a thoughtful breath as guilt undercut the memory of just how much heat they’d generated in this bed. Well, hell. Name me one heterosexual male, he argued in his own defense, who could have walked away from “Do things to me.”
Reed, Lang, Jones, Mendoza, Black, and Savage, his BOI teammates.
Okay. That was six men. But they were all married to hot, amazing women who outclassed those lucky SOBs ten ways from Sunday, so they didn’t count. So that left: no man. No man in his right mind, at any rate.
Still, he could lie here and attempt to justify his weakness until he got the picture of Valentina naked and orgasmic out of his head—or until a cow really did jump over the moon—but it wasn’t going to change a thing.
They’d had sex. Mind-blowing, earth-moving, soul-shattering sex, and he was never going to be the same again.
Like he was never going to be the same since he’d been shot in San Salvador.
Fuck. Why the hell was he going there now?
He ran his fingertips absently over his scar. Felt a latent spark of sexual heat sluice through him as he pictured Val’s mouth touching that angry skin. Laving, loving, expressing concern in a way no words ever could.
Look . . . if this is about the scar . . .