by Sandra Brown
When he came back to her, his eyes were glittering with anger, his jaw set.
She stood up and faced off with him. “I forgot my toothbrush and had to come back for it.”
He remained immutable.
“I bribed the manager into giving me an extra key. It cost me a ten-dollar bill and my autograph. Once I was here, I saw no reason to rush off.”
He didn’t even blink.
“You should have gotten stitches to close that cut.” She motioned to the Walmart sack clutched in his right hand. “I hope you at least bought Band-Aids.”
Nothing.
“All right, I know you’re angry to find me here after trying to get rid of me, but I’m here, and I’m not leaving.” In a gesture of defiance, she flicked a strand of hair over her shoulder. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Remember you asked.” He came in and slammed the door shut.
Chapter 27
As he stalked toward Kerra, he dropped the Walmart bag and shrugged off his coat. Reaching behind his back, he unclipped his holster. It was still in his right hand when he took her by the shoulders and propelled her backward toward the bed.
Either she was too shocked to protest or she was ready for this, too, because she didn’t resist as he, in one coordinated motion, set his holstered pistol on the nightstand and lowered her onto the bed. She grabbed a handful of his shirt as she lay back. He followed her down, maneuvering as he went so that when she was reclined, he was between her legs, the important body parts perfectly aligned.
Taking her face between his hands, he fused his mouth to hers, pressing his tongue deep, thrilling to the way she hummed her pleasure. He might have gone on forever just kissing her if not for a greater hunger that he must gratify or die.
He worked her top up over her breasts. Her bra was lacy and sheer and only half there to start with. The cups were easily lowered. He took a moment to cradle a breast in each hand. “I freakin’ love that,” he murmured.
“What?”
That they get so hard so fast.
The words were in his mind, but he didn’t say them aloud because by the time he thought them through he was already taking one nipple into his mouth and toying with the other, deriving pleasure from the pleasure he was giving her. With every wet tug of his mouth or sweep of his tongue or gentle pinch, she gripped his hair a little tighter and rubbed her body against his with matching maddening urgency.
He might die yet if he didn’t get inside her.
He pushed up on his knees and yanked open the buttons of his fly. As he worked his jeans down, a drop of escaped semen slicked his thumb. He was that close.
Kerra, her gaze fixed on his erection, angled her hips up, grappled with button and zipper, then lowered her jeans and panties as far down her legs as she could reach. He pulled them down and off and threw them aside.
She was too many erotic images for him to register right now, so he concentrated only on the cleft between her thighs. He slid his hand between the swollen lips of her sex, tested her readiness, then spread his fingers to open her.
She gave a little gasp of feminine modesty, and he would enjoy reliving that purely feminine reaction. Later.
But now he took hold of his penis and planted the head of it against her opening. It was tight, but it was wet, and with a subtle push he stretched it, breached it, and secured his smooth tip inside.
It was ecstasy. But still not enough.
Looking into her eyes, he continued to press into her until he was completely sheathed. He could see in her face that the sense of wonder wasn’t only his. Her lips silently formed his name.
He made a vow to himself to languish in her clenching heat, but later. Later. In the here and now he had to move. He began by pulling back ever so slightly. She clamped her lower lip between her teeth and held it until he sank into her again. When she released her lip, he ran his tongue across that incredible, turn-on pout. He kissed her beauty mark.
Responding to her restless motions beneath him, he shifted the angle of his hips and increased friction where she most wanted it, and he got it right. God, did he. Her throat arched into an offering made to him. He rubbed his open mouth along the smooth column. He nuzzled her ear and groaned the choicest of naughty words. He dipped his head and sucked her nipples in turn, causing her to whimper.
Even during this love play, he didn’t stop pumping into her. He probably had been this hard before, probably as strained and blood-infused and lust-mad and unable to command the instinctual mating movement of his hips.
But if so, he didn’t recall it, because this was the only time that mattered. He wanted this time to be an exorcism and possession at once. Doom and salvation. He wanted it to be both carnal and sacred.
He wanted this to be the fuck Kerra would remember for the rest of her life.
Her hands, which had been on his back, had moved to his butt, and now her fingers were digging in deep, holding him to her. Her head went back and her breathing turned choppy. Knowing she was about to come, he pushed deep and held, moving only to grind against that most sensitive spot. She made a sobbing sound an instant before he felt the clutch of her orgasm all along his cock.
She came long and lusciously. Just before the last rippling aftershock, he held her hips between his hands, gave a few quick thrusts, and then had the most wrenching climax of his life, expanding and pulsing until he gave a hoarse cry of helplessness and fell into her embrace.
Through the moments of subsiding, she held him close and continued to hug him to her until it was over. Only then did her body relax and settle. He lay motionless and heavy on top of her. His skin and hair were damp with sweat, his limbs deliciously heavy, his penis still snugly imbedded inside her.
He nestled his face in the curve of her neck and felt the first heartbeat of contentment he’d known in years.
“Kerra?”
“Hmm?”
Trapper stirred, then raised his head, lifted a strand of hair off her neck, and twined it around his finger. “Why is it that every room you occupy feels like a tropical rain forest?”
She laughed. “Because I’m cold-natured.”
“Not all parts are cold,” he growled, and she felt his teasing nudge inside.
She swatted his backside, then ran her hand over the taut muscle and squeezed it until he grunted a pleasured sound. “We generated a lot of heat,” she said, “and you’ve got all your clothes on. What happened to getting nekkid?”
“I think we did just fine with clothes on.”
“Better than fine.” She gave an exaggerated purr.
“That sound alone makes me want to lose the threads.” He withdrew from her, levered himself up, then left the bed and began pulling off his boots.
Kerra stacked her hands beneath her head and watched as he undressed, admiring each part of him as it was revealed. The yummy trail that she had admired from the towel up thickened and flared around his sex, of which he could be justifiably proud. She reached out and brushed her fingers across him. The hair and flesh were wet. She gave him a meaningful look.
“About that…” He exhaled through his lips. “It was safe sex. I swear. Just unprotected.”
As she lay back, she trailed her fingertip along his hard thigh from crotch to knee. “I knew what I was doing.”
They looked deeply into each other’s eyes. Seconds ticked past. It was an ideal time to acknowledge that something important had happened.
His voice low, Trapper said, “It felt good, Kerra.”
“It did,” she whispered back.
It was simple, but, in its way, profound. He wasn’t one to make romantic declarations, and if she said anything now, it would be more than he would want to hear.
She was perilously close to letting this evolve into something that would leave her heartbroken. She was perilously close to becoming like Marianne. But she wouldn’t take back having made love to him. Not for the world.
They continued to hold each other’s gaze for a few
moments longer, then Trapper changed the mood by crawling back onto the bed and leering at the provocative display of her bared breasts. “I don’t know whether to strip you or not. I kinda like you the way you are.”
“I look shameless and slutty.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“I know,” she said, laughing. “But it’s a little uncomfortable.”
“Then I’ll strip you.” He pulled her top over her head and reached behind her to unhook her bra. When he came away with it, he held it up against the lamplight and looked through the sheer fabric. “Why bother? This thing is useless.”
“Not my choice. Carson picked it.”
He looked at her, then at the bra, then back at her. “Carson picked it?”
“When he did that shopping for us.”
“That settles it. I’m gonna kill him. Fucking pervert.” He flung the bra away, then leaned over her, wrapped his hand around her breast with the finesse of a caveman, and fastened his mouth to her nipple.
Her laughter ended on a sigh when the lashing of his tongue turned lazy. “You love this?”
“Hmm?”
“What do you love? Specifically.”
“Hmm?”
“Trapper?” She pulled his head up by his hair. “Are you listening?”
“No.”
He raised up and kissed her thoroughly but without the fervency of before. This was a tender and leisurely after-sex kiss. But it stirred her no less. And him. In the midst of it, he took her hand and moved it down, pressing her palm over his penis and rubbing the back of it until she took up the massage. She felt the heat spread through him, signifying a reawakening of the passion that had consumed them only minutes ago.
“Yes, I was listening,” he said when he ended the kiss but continued whisking his lips across hers. “Specifically, I love that your nipples stay hard.”
“They do not!”
“Most of the time.”
“You’re imagining that.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. She felt his smile against her lips before he leaned back in order to look at her. “But it wasn’t my imagination that night I came to see you in the hospital.” He stroked her as he talked, following the path of his hand with his eyes. She felt their touch as keenly as that of his fingertips.
“I was chilled,” she said.
“You were scared. But you would have been really scared if you’d known what was going through my mind.”
She raised her head high enough to kiss his scruffy chin.
He smoothed his thumb over a red spot on the slope of her breast. “Maybe I should do a clean shave.”
“Don’t you dare. What was going through your mind?”
“That night in the hospital? How to get my hands on you without you screaming the place down. Besides those prim white socks, the only stitch you had on was that flimsy gown. Knowing there was nothing but you underneath, wanting to see it all, touch you everywhere, it was killing me.”
“Was it?” she asked in a sexy voice.
His breath caught suddenly, and as he released it, he moaned, “What you’re doing now is killing me.”
She made another tantalizing pass across his glans with her thumb. “Want me to stop?”
“Hell no. I’ve done it so many times to myself while thinking of you doing it just like that, wishing it was you doing it.”
He wet the tip of her breast with his tongue, then pressed it between his fingers before laying the backs of them in the hollow between her rib cage and drawing them slowly down the center of her body. They drifted across the sensitive span of skin below her navel, then back and forth over her mound.
“When you sat down on the hospital bed, that gown molded perfectly to this.” His finger traced the V, following the grooves that formed it on both sides, then down the seam between her thighs, before sliding back up and coming to rest at the point where the three met.
“I mean, it couldn’t have been more perfectly delineated for my viewing pleasure. And, I thought, God help me.” He met her gaze and added drolly, “Then you pulled that sheet up over your lap.”
He’d entranced her with his touch, his words. She cupped the back of his head and pulled him down to her for another kiss. When they pulled apart, she gingerly kissed the cut on his cheek. “Hurt?”
“Wouldn’t know. I’ve been distracted by other physical sensations brought on by your talented hand.”
“I offered to stop.”
“Don’t. You’re better at it than I am.”
She smiled. “What makes me better?”
“I tend to be more…uh, efficient.”
“I can be more efficient.”
“Please, no. Take your time. In fact, you’ve got more area to cover now than when you started.”
She laughed softly as her fist moved up the full length of his erection and rode it down again.
He asked, “How come you didn’t live with that guy in Minneapolis?”
Her hand stilled. “How did you know—”
“I checked you out, remember. Or Carson did for me.” She gave him a reproving look, but he seemed not the least bit repentant as he reached down and started her hand moving again. “You two weren’t that serious?”
“I thought we were, but then I was offered the job in Dallas, and when I accepted, without hesitation, he wished me luck, without hesitation. It had been a convenient and uncomplicated relationship, and that’s how it ended.”
“He was a loser.”
“I wouldn’t call him a loser. He developed software for the medical industry that he then sold for millions.”
“Medical software sounds dull as dirt.”
“That’s true. With him I never outran the police in a stolen vehicle during an ice storm. Nothing near that exciting.”
“That excited you?”
“Very much.”
He hooked his hand behind her knee and propped it on his hip. As boldly as before, he opened her with stroking fingers. “Anything else excited you lately?”
She rocked against his caressing hand. “The way you looked at me.”
“When?”
“When you came into the room and slammed the door.”
“How’d I look at you?”
“Exactly the way you’re looking at me now.”
“Thomas?”
He hovered on the threshold of the bedroom. Having heard the door opening, Greta had sat up in bed, her pale nightgown making her look like a wraith in the dim room.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I was just checking on you before turning in myself.”
In a voice as unsubstantial as her body, she said, “I wasn’t asleep yet.”
A bottle of vodka was on the bedside table in addition to an array of prescription medications for depression and insomnia. Greta moved from doctor to doctor, cleverly juggling refills so she would never be without an anesthetic.
When Thomas had become aware of her abuse, he had started monitoring the prescriptions and alerted the doctors to her machinations. But despite his precautions, she seemed never to be in need of her next pill, and the supply seemed limitless. Eventually he had stopped interfering.
He was twelve years older than she. At age forty, he’d decided it was time to marry. Dallas was a hothouse of cultivated beauties. He had his pick of many, but he chose Greta because she’d best filled his list of requirements. She was pretty, scandal-free, the reigning princess of Dallas society, and the only child and heir of parents with old wealth and prestige from both families.
He won Greta over with his ardent pursuit. “I won’t take no for an answer.” She had thought his insistence terribly romantic. Never would she have guessed how literally he had meant it.
His father-in-law admired and respected his business acumen, and was perhaps a bit intimidated by it, which Thomas used to his advantage. His mother-in-law considered him to be a “divine catch.” All Greta’s friends said it was a match made in heaven.
They were wrong.
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br /> Divine intervention had nothing to do with it. Thomas had made it happen, and he was the antithesis of godly.
Although he’d married Greta for practical reasons, he actually formed a strong affection for her. She could be enchanting and entertaining. By nature, he wasn’t given to frequent laughter, but she could coax it out of him. She was a generous and attentive bedmate.
To compensate for the weeks he worked nonstop, he treated her to lavish vacations. He bought her the mansion she’d long admired. The house and grounds took three years to renovate, and that kept Greta occupied and happy. He discovered that he enjoyed indulging her.
Two things he refused her. He wouldn’t attend every charity event and fund-raising ball and black-tie gala to which they were invited. He insisted on living a private life, out of the mainstream and certainly out of the limelight.
The second refusal regarded her infertility. He refused to participate in any humiliating testing or biological engineering.
Not to be denied her heart’s desire for a child, Greta scheduled monthly sexual marathons until one resulted in pregnancy. Her joy was complete. To Thomas’s staggering surprise, he’d shared it. From the day of her conception, Tiffany had been the golden fabric that had enwrapped them.
Now here they were tonight, as estranged as two people could possibly be.
“You didn’t eat much dinner,” he said. “Can’t I get you anything?”
“No, thank you.”
He never failed to offer; she never failed to decline. “Well, I hope you can get to sleep soon. Good night.”
He was backing away when she stopped him. “Thomas, who was that who came to the house a few nights ago?”
Rarely was he taken completely off guard. It took him seconds to recover. “What?”
“The night of the ice storm. Someone buzzed from the gate. You let him in.”
“Oh, that. Yes. It was one of our neighborhood security officers. He was checking to see that none of our lines were down and that we still had power.”