Breathless

by Nancy Warren

  “It was after eleven. The sun was overhead, and the way I heard it he was traveling west. No way the sun was in that driver’s eyes.”

  West. Traveling west. How the hell did she know which way the compass needle had been pointing when she was almost killed?

  Killed. The word made her shiver.

  He gazed at her, his clenched jaw relaxing, his eyes turning greener before her startled gaze. He took a step toward her and she thought he’d reach out and touch her, but it seemed he thought better of it. His hands dropped to his sides. “Sophie, you should take a vacation.”

  10

  “A VACATION?” SHE STARED at him, stunned. What kind of a stupid idea was that? “My vacation’s already scheduled for next summer. I’m taking an escorted cycling tour of the Gulf Islands.”

  He seemed momentarily diverted from his purpose. “An escorted cycling tour?”

  She’d rather he laughed at her than yelled at her. She shrugged. “I always choose escorted tours. Less chance of getting lost.”

  He wasn’t so easily diverted, though. “You should take some time off, go away somewhere.”

  She grit her teeth wanting to kick him for being a jerk when she needed some TLC. “I need a hot bath and some liniment, not a vacation.”

  He sighed, and leaned against the door. As she gazed at him, with his rugged he-man good looks, the broad shoulders and head-to-toe muscles, she almost wished she could keep him there as a living, breathing safety system. Instinctively, she knew he’d step in front of a bullet or speeding car to protect her life. Any innocent life, she imagined.

  After the shock of her almost-accident, a big strapping man standing between her and trouble seemed like an awfully good idea.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up, then I need to talk to you.”

  She glanced down at herself, sticky and wet with cold coffee, her knees grimy with stuff off the sidewalk she didn’t care to contemplate. She felt the incipient soreness of bruises bubbling under the surface of her skin, and imagined the contusion factory was working overtime.

  Tomorrow she’d look like an overripe eggplant.

  All she wanted was a hot bath, some aspirin and a chick flick. A day spent on the couch sounded like heaven. But somehow, she didn’t think that was going to happen. The detective obviously had intimidation and browbeating on his agenda.

  Giving in to the inevitable, she said, “Let me change, and I’ll be back.”

  “I should take you to the hospital and have you looked at.”

  Frustration had her turning on him huffily. “But you won’t, because I’m not going. I fell on the sidewalk. Tomorrow I’ll have some bruises.”

  He limped toward her, his expression far from that of a trained healer. “I’m certified in first aid. I take a look at you or the hospital does. Not open to negotiation.”

  “You know what you are?”

  “Losing patience.”

  “Pushy. You’re pushy. Push, push, push…” she muttered as she stalked, stiff-kneed, toward the kitchen. “I’m taking two aspirin and I’ll call you in the morning.” She reached for the bottle of pain relievers she kept in the kitchen, filled a glass with water, popped the pills then drank the rest of the water thirstily.

  “I’ll go after I’ve checked you out. Put on a housecoat or something so I can see what I’m doing.” His words were uttered in an everyday tone, but she felt a flush begin at her toes and work its way up.

  Her body turned of its own volition to face him as she recalled the last time they’d spent time together. When he couldn’t see what he was doing. Because it was dark. Inside a closet. Intimate, claustrophobic and sexy as hell.

  Their gazes locked, and if he hadn’t been thinking anything along those lines, the look on her face must have reminded him. The ice melted off the polar cap in seconds, blown apart by the volcanic heat in his eyes. “I didn’t mean…”

  “Didn’t you?” Her voice was barely steady.

  Maybe it was a reaction to the experience of almost being killed, but her body felt like it needed to celebrate life in the most fundamental way possible. Heat started to bubble inside her as he came for her, his limping gait not fast, but steady, purpose in his eyes.

  It wasn’t fear that had her stepping back, it was the need for a hard surface to brace herself against. She already knew that once their bodies collided she’d need the support.

  He stepped toward her and she stepped back in a simple choreography, as though their blood pounded to the same beat. Step, step, step, his gaze locked on hers and she couldn’t have broken the contact if she’d wanted to.

  It was almost a shock when she backed into the kitchen counter.

  She gripped the granite, cool beneath her heated flesh, bracing herself for the physical and emotional onslaught that was almost upon her. Close to two hundred pounds of irate, sexually charged male was advancing on her. He dragged off his light jacket and draped it across a stool at her breakfast bar.

  Her chin rose slightly as he closed in on her. She had no idea why. It didn’t make her taller and only exposed the vulnerable length of her neck to him.

  Her insides began to quiver with heightened awareness as he hit the kitchen, his foot and cast making a slap-thunk sound on the Italian floor tile.

  Then he was there in front of her. Her chin tilted even more in order to maintain eye contact. She felt the heat pulsing off him, and his coiled tension. He invaded her personal space and she welcomed him. He kept advancing until he was flush against her and she whimpered, deep in her throat.

  Her lips parted as his head lowered, but he didn’t kiss her. He rested his forehead against hers, giving her a close-up view of the knife-straight bridge of his nose. She wondered dimly how he’d made it so far, given his lifestyle, without ever breaking it. Each of her brothers sported a bump or jog from rugby, wrestling or roughhousing. Blake either had straighter healing bones than her brothers or he was a better fighter.

  “What am I going to do with you?” he said, knocking all thoughts of noses, straight or otherwise, out of her head. She’d been fairly certain she knew exactly what he was going to do with her. Have sex and soon had seemed the general idea, in his mind and in hers. Had he changed his mind? Before they even started?

  She wished she knew him well enough to tell him how much she needed him right now. How much she needed to erase those terrible seconds of heart-stopping terror when she’d believed she was about to die. How much she needed the warm embrace of another human being, the temporary release from worry and tense muscles. And what the hell else was she going to do with the gallons of adrenaline still cruising her system looking for an outlet?

  But she didn’t know him well enough, so she simply asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I should go.”

  She felt how hot his body was, and raised a trembling hand to touch the crisp hair at the nape of his neck. “Are you going to?”

  “No.” The word was short and sharp, as frustrated as it was husky.

  He tipped up her chin with one hand and lowered his mouth to hers.

  She gripped the granite counter harder, to anchor herself as lust, pure, unstoppable lust, roared through her body. Dimly, she realized it must be a reaction from her earlier ordeal. Escape from near death seemed to have an aphrodisiac effect on her. Still, in the future she thought she’d stick to oysters.

  His mouth plundered hers and she plundered right back, as greedy for sex as she was for life.

  His tongue was insistent, thrusting in her mouth in a rhythm that had her moaning and her hips wiggling in anticipation.

  “I can’t believe what a terrible idea this is,” he murmured as he reached for the hem of her clingy rose-colored cotton sweater and peeled it over her head.

  “The worst idea,” she panted, unbuttoning his navy shirt with urgent haste.

  When she had the buttons undone she pulled the shirt from his pants and spread the two halves, catching her breath at the sight of his chest. Not so muscle
d as to look as if he spent his life pumping iron and popping steroids, but sculpted enough that his abs were taut, his pecs defined and covered with just the right amount of coppery-brown chest hair.

  She caught him studying her chest with the same fascination, and the intensity of his stare had her nipples contracting and thrusting forward, puckering the silky fabric of her bra. As he lifted a hand to touch her through the silk, she took the opportunity to unbutton his cuffs.

  He let her push the shirt off his shoulders, but shrugged out of the thing impatiently, returning immediately to her breasts the second his hands were free.

  She loved the way his chest rose and fell with his breathing, and the steady bump of his heart beneath his skin.

  Oh, and she loved the feeling of air and light on her skin when he removed her bra with practiced ease.

  Even more, she loved his almost reverent intake of breath as he cupped her breasts in his big hands. “They’re so spectacular, I thought I’d imagined them.”

  She chuckled. He wasn’t the first man to call her breasts spectacular. Of course, she’d rather have a sense of direction, but she’d be lying if she didn’t admit to being a little vain about her breasts.

  “They’re real,” she assured him.

  “I feel a sudden urge for us to join one of those remote tribes you see in National Geographic, just so I can watch these, loose and free like this, every day.”

  She let her gaze run up and down his half-clothed body. “I don’t think I’d mind watching you in your loincloth—and spear,” she said, with lustful silliness, staring straight at his crotch. If spear was extravagant, she thought billy club might be about right. Suddenly, she was feverish to know. What was he packing?

  She’d felt his erection in the closet and had been thinking of it more often than she probably should. But now she needed to see it, hold it, taste it. But more than all these, she needed to feel him thrusting deep inside her body.

  The relentless, wet wanting between her legs was becoming more insistent.

  She reached for his belt. It was as though she’d put her foot to the gas pedal because that seemed to speed every-thing up. He mirrored her actions, his hands leaving her breasts with reluctance to head for the button of her slacks. They worked with quiet concentration, freeing each other of belts, buttons, zippers.

  The coffee-stained wool snagged at her skin like a cold, damp sponge as he tugged her slacks and panties off.

  Bright sunlight streamed into the kitchen—it couldn’t be more different than the dark cramped confines of the closet where this had begun. She thought of the encounter in Mr. Forsyth’s closet as foreplay, a teasing hint of what was about to take place.

  A stronger woman might be able to resist Blake, but Sophie knew she couldn’t. Not anymore. Having nearly been run down seemed to have diminished her scruples about sleeping with the cop she’d brought into the bank. Sure, she might end up losing her job, but right now, being alive and intimately connected with another human being seemed a whole lot more important.

  She trembled as Blake hoisted her onto the counter, then gasped as she settled on the granite, so cold against her hot flesh.

  Then he spread her legs and sank to his haunches.

  Hands behind her on the counter, she braced herself, every part of her quivering for him. His head looked so dark between her thighs, the sun glinted off espresso-colored curls and a single gray hair stood out like a silver thread. She wanted to reach forward and touch the springy curls, but had a feeling she’d need to keep her hands planted behind her to stay earthbound.

  She felt his breath, soft and erotic on the inside of her thighs, felt it waft against her own intimate curls like a gentle breeze through a wheat field. She ached for the touch of his tongue on her trembling flesh and it came, but not where she most burningly wanted it. He kissed the inside of her thigh.

  “Mmm,” she purred, her eyes drifting shut to savor the sensations. Probably she’d been this turned on before; she simply couldn’t remember when.

  He placed a row of kisses in entirely the wrong direction from where she so desperately needed him.

  “Mmm-mmm.” This time the sound she emitted was more a groan than a purr.

  There was a time for teasing, a time for long slow buildup. Now was not one of those times. He didn’t seem to have picked up on her obvious clues. The way her muscles were so tense, her hips strained to remain still, her breath started to hitch.

  Little kisses traveled up to the front of her thigh, and then she felt his tongue. The shock of it lapping in such an odd place had her jerking her gaze to see what in the world he was doing. He lapped a faint brownish stain against her skin, then raised his head, as though aware of her perturbed gaze and shot her a killer grin. “I missed my morning coffee,” he said and continued to lap.

  “I’ll make you a whole pot,” she promised feebly. “After.”

  “But, I’m thirsty now,” he mumbled against her thigh, and she felt the warm moist puff of air shivering against her skin as he spoke. He licked slowly up her thigh toward her hip while her mingled tension, frustration and desire mounted.

  It was undeniably erotic, but there was a much more needy spot crying out for his attention. She wished she’d knocked the coffee into her crotch.

  As though he’d read her mind, he raised his head once more. “I think some dribbled this way,” and with his gaze holding hers, he took his index finger and tracked the supposed drop from her upper thigh, down the crease where her thigh met her pelvis. Closer and closer to her yearning, hungry core.

  She wanted to hold still, but she couldn’t. What those searing green eyes promised, and the single tracking finger hinted at, had her pumping her hips helplessly in the grip of desire. She wanted to tell him to hurry, but words seemed to have deserted her. Her only available communication seemed to be a kind of cavewoman grunting.

  His finger touched her throbbing hot spot and she added moaning to the grunting.

  Her head fell back and she shut her eyes, focusing all her energies inward, on the rising tide of excitement.

  His finger, after that one brief touch, left her and his tongue tracked the course his finger had taken, from her hip, down the incredibly sensitive crease of flesh at the top of her thighs, to land, finally at her entrance, so hot and wet there could be no mistaking her need. His tongue traced her opening and she felt her body open wider in an unconscious plea for him to fill her.

  But he didn’t. “Not yet,” he whispered so softly she barely heard him over her own escalating moans. In the closet she’d had to control herself. Here she didn’t, and knew she couldn’t if she tried.

  His tongue trailed slowly up to the frantically throbbing bud. As the roughness of his tongue slid over the slickly smooth surface, she felt the warm wave build behind her eyelids.

  She cried out.

  He licked her again, not much more than a flick of the tongue. He seemed to gauge how close she was and was determined to drag out his sensual assault.

  But need was greater than finesse, and she thrust her hips forward against his mouth. “Please,” she gasped. “Please!” And he, accepting she needed the release now, grabbed her hips and feasted on her.

  Usually she tried to contain her embarrassingly rambunctious orgasms, but there was too much free-floating adrenaline, too much coiled tension in search of release, too much desire kindled by this particular man.

  Her body was trembling so hard she felt she would tumble to the kitchen floor without his big strong hands holding her in place. His tongue drove her up mercilessly, exactly the way she needed it and her moans became cries, her cries, sobs, her sobs ululating wails. Finally, as the building wave crested and she felt her body thrown against the current like a tossed surfer, she screamed.

  He held her through the mind-blowing intensity of the first explosion and eased her down through the aftershocks as her cries subsided to a final long drawn-out sigh of release.

  But still, there was an unfulfille
d ache deep inside her body, and Blake was still wearing his unzipped pants. They hung at his hips, so he was half-naked, but half-naked was not nearly naked enough. She slid her boneless body to the floor and this time she was the one to drop to her knees and strip him naked.

  A smile of utter delight tugged at her lips once she allowed her gaze to dwell on him. He was as magnificent in the proudly upstanding flesh as her questing fingers had guessed.

  She reached for him, but he stopped her. “Condoms,” he all but spluttered, and she understood he wanted to be inside her, and fast. She wasn’t about to get in the way of such a truly excellent idea.

  “I have some in the bedroom, but I’m clean and on the Pill,” she told him. “You?”

  “Same,” he muttered, already hoisting her back up against the purring fridge. He must have realized how inane he sounded. “I mean. Not the Pill. Clean.”

  Then her hips were in his big, capable hot hands and her legs were round his waist. He kissed her, deep and hard and she tasted her own pleasure and a hint of coffee.

  She felt his hardness probing and the shiver of appreciation as he drove high up into her body. The fridge was cold and hard against her back and Blake was hot and hard against her front, but it was the thrusting heat inside her body that had her going out of her mind.

  Her hands, clinging round his neck, began to claw at his shoulders as their bodies thrust together, as primal and satisfying as a jungle drum.

  She heard him groan, but it was more a groan of pain than pleasure and her eyes flew open.

  “Blake. Your leg! Put me down.”

  “I’m not leaving your body until we both come.” But he said it through gritted teeth.

  She couldn’t argue with his logic, but neither could she let him continue hurting himself. “Kitchen chair,” she gasped.

  “Floor.” And he eased them down until he lay on the floor and she straddled him. It had taken some maneuvering from them both, but he was still imbedded inside her.

  She grinned into his face, and then leaned forward and kissed him deeply. Her bashed knees protested when she tried to push up on them, so she lay flat atop him, put her legs between his and pushed her toes against the kitchen tile, rocking against him.