Huck frowned at her. “What were you doing?”
“I was on the phone.”
“With who? You’re flushed.”
Perversely, more blood rushed up her neck into her face. “My boyfriend,” she said, seizing upon the fabricated excuse. “He makes me hot,” she added, just to needle him.
Huck’s deep chuckle rumbled up his throat and those silvery eyes crinkled at the corners. “You don’t have a boyfriend.”
She felt her brows knit. “How would you know?”
“Because it’s not in the file.”
“The file?” she asked, alarmed. “You have a file on me?”
“Sure.”
“Let me see it,” she said, opening her palm in a hand-it-over gesture he completely ignored.
“Sorry, that’s privileged information.”
Sapphira felt her mouth sag open. “Privileged information?” she parroted, stunned. Her hand dropped back to her side. “It’s about me, but I can’t see it?”
He winced regretfully, though she could tell he was enjoying himself, the wretch. “That’s what makes it privileged.” He said the word as though she were a halfwit, which made her want to smash things and scream.
“I know what privileged means, you arrogant jackass,” she snapped. “What I want to know is why is it privileged from me?”
“Arrogant jackass.” Seemingly proud of the insult, he smiled at her and the soles of her feet tingled. “That’s a new one.”
“I have more. The file?” she prodded.
Huck sighed. “There is no file. I made it up.”
“What?”
“I made it up.”
“Why on earth would you do that?” she asked, her voice climbing. God, the man infuriated her. She didn’t know when any man had ever managed to get under her skin quite the way that Huck did.
He lifted one muscled shoulder into a semblance of a shrug and smiled unrepentantly. “I was bored. Pissing you off entertains me.”
Pissing her off entertained him? Entertained him? She’d been a bundle of sexually miserable nerves for the past two days--magnified to near torture as a result of that brain-frying bone-melting near-orgasmic kiss--and he was bored? Needed entertaining? She mentally added a few more choice names to ones she’d called him--some of them anatomically impossible--and concentrated on not springing across the room like a spider monkey on crack and pummeling the hell out of him.
“If you didn’t have a file, then how did you know that I didn’t have a boyfriend?” she asked instead. What? Was she wearing a sign? No significant other here, last date two months ago? Doomed to remain single?
Huck studied her thoughtfully before responding and that intense scrutiny left her feeling raw and exposed. “I can just tell.”
“Because I haven’t had a date? Because no one has called? How do you know my boyfriend isn’t out of town, or even out of the country for that matter?”
He sighed heavily. “You don’t have a boyfriend.”
“But you can’t know that,” she insisted. She didn’t know why this was so important, but it was.
He paused and quirked a brow. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No, but that’s beside the point.”
Those silvery eyes widened and a bark of laughter erupted from his throat. He straightened in his chair and passed a hand over his face, evidently trying to erase a smile. “There’s a point to all of this?”
“The point is that I could have a boyfriend if I wanted one,” she said through gritted teeth. “And you can’t know if I have one or not.”
“But I was right. So I did know.”
“No, you suspected, but you didn’t know. There’s a difference.” She smiled sweetly at him. “It’s subtle, so you probably missed it.”
Huck stood, unfolding all six and half feet of him from her recliner, and sidled toward her. She got a mental image of a hawk circling above her and a giddy thrill tripped down her spine. But there was nothing subtle about the way his gaze traveled up her legs, lingered over her breasts and mouth, and then ultimately slammed into hers. The breath thinned in her lungs, her heart pounded so hard she could hear it thundering in her ears to the point that she was almost deaf. Though everything in her screamed “Retreat!” and “Run, fool, run!” Sapphira said goodbye to self-preservation and stood her ground. She tilted her chin, refusing to give up an inch of space.
“Let me tell you what I didn’t miss,” he said, his voice low and gravelly and just a bit dangerous. “I didn’t miss the way you kissed me a little while ago. I didn’t miss the little moans of pleasure I ate from your mouth and I sure as hell didn’t miss the way that you want me.” He inched closer, seemingly daring her to argue. “I know you don’t have a boyfriend because if you did, you wouldn’t have kissed me, or even wanted to for that matter.” A little smile played over his increasingly closer mouth. “Despite evidence to the contrary, you aren’t nearly as shallow as you’ve been pretending to be.”
“I haven’t been--“
He interrupted her lie. “Why have you been pretending? Who knows? It’s a mystery for another time. But if I had my guess, you were on the phone with a friend just now--probably Cindy--trying to arrange an interruption because you know as well as I do that if something doesn’t give soon, we’ll be in bed faster than you can say ‘charge it.’”
Sapphira blinked, equally impressed and terrified that he’d pegged her so damned thoroughly.
“Shut up, Huck,” she whispered, looping her arms around his neck as the inevitability of this moment crashed around her, bringing anticipation, joy, fear and breathlessness. “Nobody likes a know-it-all.”
CHAPTER 8
Miracle of miracles, Huck thought dimly as his mouth latched hungrily onto hers--she wasn’t arguing. Didn’t try to deny it or even put up the token protest.
Instead, true to form, she’d made a smart-assed comment, then prevented him from uttering one in return by striking with a pre-emptive kiss.
Only a moron would complain and, while he had to admit he couldn’t claim full cognitive reasoning at the moment--because all the blood had rushed to another part of his anatomy--he was not, and had never been, a moron.
At the moment, he was simply on fire. And hungry. For her.
The kiss, urgent and unplanned, had snapped something inside of him, had set off a reaction he should have realized was merely waiting for the opportunity to present itself.
Given the way her body was pressed tightly to his, the urgency in her kiss, the slide of hand small hands over his body, that moment was now.
In the darkest corner of his mind, Huck realized that he should stop this, that sleeping with her would surely be the end of his professional career with Ranger Security and an end to something else, less definable, but there all the same. He knew this and yet he also knew that walking away from her--actually stopping--was out of the question.
Physically, he couldn’t do it.
That alone set off a warning bell loud enough to rattle his insides, but didn’t so much as make him flinch away from her.
For reasons he couldn’t explain and couldn’t reason, Sapphira Stravos, the mouthiest little rich girl he’d ever met, had the power to turn him inside out...and perversely, he looked forward to the destruction.
More specifically, he looked forward to coming apart inside of her.
With that thought in mind, Huck picked her up and started toward her bedroom.
“Put me down,” she said, startled. “I’m too heavy.”
Huck carefully set her on the bed and followed her down, kissing the side of her neck and nipping at her earlobe. “Obviously that’s not true.”
Her eyes warmed with pleasure. “But what about you knee?”
Huck chuckled softly, systematically undoing the buttons which marched down her shirt. Smooth skin, swell of a plump breasts... “Darlin’, that injury is well south of what part of my body I’m going to need for this.”
She laughed, more of a
wicked hum in her throat. “That’s not what I meant.”
He knew what she meant, but it didn’t matter. He slid a finger over the lacy edge of her bra--one he recognized from their recent shopping spree--then bent and ran his tongue along the tempting swell, causing her breath to catch in her throat.
He’d never heard anything as erotic as that one telling sound in his life.
“Pretty,” he murmured huskily.
Sapphira’s fingers tunneled into his hair and he felt her roll more firmly toward him, aligning the hardest part of him with the softest part of her. “Bet you wish you’d carried it for me now, don’t you?”
He popped the front clasp and had the pleasure of watching her lovely breasts come free of their flimsy restraints. “No,” he said. “But I’m going to like taking if off of you.” Then he bent his head and pulled one achingly perfect dusky nipple into his mouth.
She arched against him and another mewling noise issued from her throat. The sound swirled around his senses as he circled the bud with his tongue and pulled deep, savoring the taste of her in his mouth. Musky, fruity, the taste of woman. Oh, God, he could devour her. He cupped the other breast, rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and felt her press her hips against his, silently begging for what he desperately wanted to give her. Release and redemption, the disease and the cure.
She tugged at his shirt and he broke away from her long enough to let her drag it over his head. She tossed it aside, then whimpered as his belly touched hers--skin to skin.
He quaked.
The sensation was so foreign it took a second to process, but before he could fully assimilate the emotional implication, Sapphira arched up and shrugged out of her shirt and bra, then her fingers found the button of his jeans and whatever profound thought which had been about to surface swiftly fled.
He inhaled sharply as her fingers slipped beneath his waistband. Impossibly, he hardened even further and his dick throbbed with every beat of his heart. The whine of his zipper punctuated the silence and he felt his jeans sag away as her hand suddenly wrapped around him. A groan tore from his throat and he bent once again and fed at her breasts, suckling hard as she worked the slippery skin against her palm.
Desperate to feel even more of her, Huck slid a hand down her sweet belly and carefully unsnapped her pants. Less than a minute later, even her panties--pretty, sheer and purple, which matched the bra--lay in the floor with the rest of their clothing.
Fully naked. At last.
He smoothed his hand over her hip, tracing the full womanly curve, then over her lush rump, the very one he’d been lusting after for what felt like years. He gave a gentle knead and she reciprocated by slipping her thumb over the engorged head of his penis. He jerked against her and growled softly because it felt so damned good.
But not as good as she would taste, he knew.
Huck worked his way down her abdomen, kissing every other rib, licking a path around her belly button, then parted her soft brown curls and fastened his mouth upon the very heart of her. Her taste bathed his tongue in a flavor so wonderful he groaned from the pleasure.
Sapphira fisted her hands into the bedspread and bucked beneath him, a keening cry smothering in her throat.
He smiled against her and suckled more, paying close attention to that kernel of sensation nestled high in her folds. He worked his tongue, laved and lapped, feeding at her as though he were a starving man and she his last feast. He sipped up her womanly juices, bathed his index finger in them and then tucked it deep inside.
Her feminine muscled tightened around him, offering a prelude to what would come next, those soft, wet walls closing around him as he pushed inside of her. The mere thought brought him almost to climax.
“Huck,” she said, her voice broken and raw with desire. “Please. I can’t-- I need--”
He knew what she needed. He needed it too.
Desperately.
What he also needed was a condom and to his immediate horror he realized he didn’t have one. He swore. “Sapphira?”
Her hands slid over his shoulders. “Yeah?”
“I, uh... I don’t have a condom.”
She leaned forward and nipped at his neck. “Bedside drawer,” she said. “Hurry.”
Relieved beyond measure, Huck didn’t allow himself to think about the fact that she kept the protection readily available--for other men, obviously, which was intolerable--but rather decided to focus on the positive, like the fact that he was about to be inside of her, burying himself to the hilt in her softness, feeling her tighten around his aching dick, her breasts against his chest and her nails biting into his ass.
He quickly opened the package, withdrew the protection and swiftly, hand shaking, rolled it into place. The instant he was finished, she pushed him onto his back and straddled him, her hot weepy folds settling over him. He instinctively nudged, his head pushing up against her clit.
She whimpered, winced with pleasure, and glided over him, coating him with her juices. “Sapphira,” he growled warningly. If she didn’t take the control she’d wanted soon, he was going to steal it back from her. Of course, that was assuming he’d ever had any control to start with and that, he knew, was doubtful.
She bent forward and laved his nipple with her tongue, slid her greedy hands over his chest, mapping him wonderingly. She frowned when she reached the pink puckered scar on his side, carefully skimming her fingertips over it before pressing a delicate kiss against the wound, as though she could make it all better now.
Before he could form the first cynical thought, she raised her hips and settled down on top of him, absorbing every inch of him deep inside her. He watched the breath leak out of her lungs, her chest deflate with pleasure, as she seated herself firmly over him.
Huck set his jaw so hard he thought he heard his teeth crack. Sapphira, in that moment, was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Beautiful lips swollen from his kisses, caramel curls tumbling over her shoulders and teasing the tops of her full, ripe breasts. Sweet belly, the flare of her curvy hips, that patch of dewy curls seated against him and her ass--
Sweet heaven, the woman had an ass that simply would not quit. Lush and heart-shaped, perfect for his hands, he thought, as he slid his them around and shaped her to him.
She arched up, then slowly sank back down, clamping around him--holding on, as though she couldn’t let him go, couldn’t feel enough. The mere idea made his chest swell with some sort of caveman pride and he leaned forward and pulled a nipple into his mouth, suckling hard, flattening the crown of her breast against the roof of his mouth.
She cried out, tensed and rode him harder. Up and down, up and down, tightening and tightening, refusing to let him go. He kneaded her rump and thrust hard against her, could feel his aching balls drawing up in preparation for climax.
Her first, Huck thought, biting the inside of his cheek as the orgasm gather force.
He bucked beneath her again, suckled the other breast and ground his hips against hers.
Ah...the magic combination, he thought as her entire body went rigid with release and her mouth opened in a soundless scream. He watched her breasts jiggle and heave as the climax washed over her, felt her fist around him over and over, her neck go all but boneless, barely able to support the weight of her own head, much less the rest of her body as she collapsed on top of him.
No worries, Huck thought as he rolled her over onto her belly, dragged her hips--that delectable ass--into position, then pushed into her from behind. She wasn’t going to need any more of her own strength.
* * *
The orgasm had been so intense Sapphira’s vision had blackened around the edges and hadn’t returned to proper focus before Huck had taken control and, impossibly, another climax hovered just out of reach. She could feel it building deep inside of her with every powerful thrust. His big hands were spread in an almost territorial fashion over her ass, kneading, stroking, with every push of him deep inside of her.
&nb
sp; Though she knew it was physically impossible, Sapphira could feel him in every cell of her body. He’d infected her, she thought as his scent coiled around her, drugging her, making her boneless and rigid, sated and yet energized, and with every delicious draw and drag between their joined bodies--with every brush of his balls against her aching flesh--she wanted more.
More of this.
More of him.
More of them.
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, whimpered and pushed hard against him, desperate to take every enormously glorious inch of him. Her breasts bounced back and forth on her chest, absorbing the force of his thrusts. Her nipples tingled with the remembered warmth of his mouth.
Harder, deeper and harder still.
“I...love...your...ass,” Huck said, punctuating each growling word with a reverent squeeze.
Since the lamentable size of her ass had always been a sore spot with her, he couldn’t have uttered a single compliment that would have pleased her more. A rush of feminine pride washed over her, bringing a smile to her lips.
Another bright flash of tingly warmth ignited in her womb, the fuse to another bone-melting climax sizzling along until the orgasm detonated in a fiery ball of sensation which ripped the breath from her lungs and made every muscle tense in awe as it ripped through her. Colored lights spotted her vision, marking the occasion with blazing display behind her closed lids.
Huck leaned forward, nipped at her shoulder, then she felt him stiffen behind her and a long bellowing groan worthy of a caveman tore from his throat. He held her tight and pushed hard, angling deep as he pulsed into her, jerking from the force of release.
Desperate to see him--to watch him come into her--Sapphira turned her head and gazed over her shoulder at Huck. Lips peeled back over his teeth, shoulders and forearms absolutely locked in a sinewy display which would forever be emblazoned in her brain, Lucas Finn epitomized the word virile in that moment. If fact, she could say beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’d never seen a man so beautiful in his masculinity. The thought sent another tingle rippling through her sex and she squeezed around him once more.
Men Out of Uniform: 6 Book Omnibus Page 55