by Gayle Wilson
It shouldn’t have, she acknowledged, as he deepened the kiss. There had been no awkwardness in his embrace. No bumped noses. Nothing to detract from the intensity of what was happening. Nothing but a sense that this had been inevitable. And that it was right.
For days this tension had been building between them. It was the reason he got under her skin so easily. The reason she’d instinctively turned to him when she’d finally admitted he might be right about the Inquisitor. Her intuitive recognition of his strength had played a role in that decision, as well, of course.
Whatever sparked the attraction that had so quickly flared between them, she wanted this. Wanted him to kiss her. To hold her. To make love to her.
If she had met him anywhere else, under any other circumstances, she would have been as fascinated as she was now by a man so different from the others she’d known. She might not have pursued that fascination, recognizing how dangerous for her peace of mind someone like Sean Murphy would be. Now that they’d been thrown together, in a situation fraught with a different kind of danger, it had become impossible to maintain that necessary distance.
He lifted his head, breaking the kiss. Bereft, she opened her eyes to look up into his.
“Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”
What he’d just said had nothing to do with her and everything to do with what was going on around them. And she understood that.
In all honesty, she even agreed with his assessment. It wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done, either. At the moment, she didn’t care.
She stood on tiptoe, stretching until her mouth was again open just beneath his. Teasingly, she ran her tongue along his upper lip. Before she had completed the motion, his mouth closed over hers again. Their tongues melded, moving together as if this were the thousandth kiss they’d shared rather than the first.
His fingers began to work at the loose knot she’d tied in the belt of her robe. After a few seconds it parted, allowing him to slip one hand into the narrow opening, its warmth and roughness grazing her hip. His other hand was pressed into the small of her back, urging her body into a closer intimacy with his.
The fingers of the hand that had invaded her robe cupped under her breast. She could feel their callused hardness even through the silk of her gown. As his thumb moved back and forth across her nipple, causing it to grow hard, a sweet heat began to build low in her body.
His lips left hers to trace along the curve of her jaw. Her head tilted, allowing him access to the sensitive skin below her ear. As his mouth trailed down her neck, his hand deserted her breast to push her robe and then the strap of her gown to one side, exposing her shoulder.
When his lips replaced his fingers there, she leaned her cheek against the crisp thickness of his hair. It smelled of soap. Shampoo. Clean and totally masculine. Infinitely appealing.
His mouth, still opened, glided across her collarbone and then retraced its path, again encountering the intrusive barrier of her clothing. With the intent of alleviating that particular problem once and for all, she leaned back slightly.
The air of the room touched the dampness his tongue had left on her skin, cooling it. Another sensation to be added to all those destroying any possibility that they might not make love tonight.
She slipped the robe off her shoulders, allowing it to fall to the floor. Then, before he had time for second thoughts, she stepped back into Sean’s arms.
As if there had been no interruption, his lips resumed their exploration, moving inexorably toward the shadowed V between her breasts. Her breath caught as his mouth followed the deep neckline of her gown, another obstruction to what she now desperately wanted—the sweet, wet heat of his tongue against her bare skin.
As she made that admission, Sean slipped his thumb under one broad lace strap, easing it over her shoulder. Before she could protest—if she had had the strength of will—his lips began to move over the top of the now exposed swell of her breast. The rush of desire turned her knees to water, so intense she was forced to put her hands on his shoulders for support.
Then his mouth closed around her sensitized nipple. He suckled it strongly enough to create an answering pull deep within her belly.
Her quick intake of breath caused him to release the pressure. With his tongue he gently laved the areola instead, circling with a surprising tenderness. That sensation, although completely different from the more demanding one that had come before, intensified the aching emptiness between her legs.
Unexpectedly, his teeth closed over the hardened bud of her nipple. Although the bite was light, almost playful, her fingers tightened over his shoulders, nails digging into his back as pleasure mingled with pain.
Her hips strained upward, trying to satisfy her growing need by pushing into his erection. Through the material of his jeans, she could feel its heat and hardness. And she wanted them. Just as she wanted him.
His thumb hooked under the remaining strap of her gown, preparing to sweep it off her shoulder. If he did, like her robe, it would fall away, removing the remaining barrier of her clothing. She wanted that, too.
To feel the heat of his skin against hers. Flesh to flesh. And to make that happen…
As he prepared to push the strap down her arm, her fingers moved to the waistband of his jeans. Trembling, they fumbled over the metal buttons of his fly.
“Here?” he asked.
A question that should have been answered long before they’d reached this point. Despite the near-mindless haze of need and desire, she knew that she didn’t want him to make love to her here. Not surrounded by the mementos of her childhood.
“One of the other rooms.”
Sean didn’t argue with her decision. He released the strap and took her arm instead, drawing her with him toward the door.
The interruption allowed her time to think of all the reasons why this was a bad idea. She didn’t want them in her head. All she wanted was to be held. To be kissed until she was conscious of nothing but his lips moving against hers. To be loved.
To be loved…
How many times had she warned patients about the dangers of equating sex with love? Or even with emotional intimacy. Companionship. Comfort. Any of the dozens of other fulfillments people believed they could find in what was—and would be tonight—a purely physical act.
Right now, however, she wasn’t going to analyze why, against all the familiar and wise injunctions about safety and morality and self-esteem, she was about to make love with a stranger. Something that was foreign to the carefully logical person she’d always been.
She wasn’t looking for commitment. And neither was he.
All she wanted was the warmth of Sean’s living, breathing body against hers. His strength beside her through the night, keeping her safe.
She needed to celebrate the fact that she was alive. Still alive, despite everything. And she could think of no better way to affirm that than by spending these remaining hours of darkness with a man who had, during the last few days, made her feel more alive than she had in years.
What could be wrong with rejoicing in the fact that together they had managed to keep the darkness at bay for another day? Another night. Another hour.
Sean had stripped the satin coverlet back from the sheets of the bed in the guest suite, allowing it to slide to the floor at its foot. Then, laying his wallet on the bedside table, he had unfastened his jeans, peeling them and his briefs down over muscled thighs and calves with that same economy of motion.
He stepped out of them and turned to face her. Despite the dimness of the room, it was clear that he was totally, almost shockingly aroused. Again, that blatant masculinity seemed out of place. Almost frightening.
Unaware of the effect his nudity was having, he removed a condom from his billfold, unwrapping it with what appeared to be the ease of long practice. In the middle of putting it on, he glanced up.
“What’s wrong?”
Only with his question did she realize that she had
stopped perhaps three feet from the bed, arms crossed over her body as if she were chilled. She licked her lips, trying to find the right words to explain why something she’d been so eager for only seconds ago now seemed full of risk.
“I’m just not sure—”
“I am. Sure enough for both of us. Come here.”
What he’d said made little sense. Yet even as she acknowledged that, she gave in to his certainty.
She had already taken a step toward him when she realized she was still wearing her nightgown. She lifted her hands to push first one strap and then the other off her shoulders. The silk slipped free, sliding down her body to pool around her feet.
When she looked up, she saw that Sean’s eyes had followed its descent. Then they lifted, making a slow examination of her body before they met hers.
What was within them helped ease the sense of alienation she had felt almost as soon as she’d stepped out of his arms. She needed to recapture the feeling of rightness, of inevitability, with which this had begun. And maybe the only way to do that was to step back into them. When he held out his hand, she put hers into it.
He pulled her against his side, releasing her fingers to put his arm around her shoulder. Then he lowered his head, pressing his lips against her hair.
It was a surprising gesture, especially from a man who was so hard. Part reassurance and part comfort. And she had no idea how he could have known she so very badly needed both.
He held her a moment before, using the hand on her shoulder, he urged her toward the bed. He put his left knee on its edge, and then, bringing her with him, lay down on the lavender-scented sheets.
As his body began to lower over hers, she looked into his face, again slightly alien in the darkness of the room. With his hand, he parted her legs, guiding his erection into the wetness of her body. She hadn’t realized until then how ready for him she was. Not until he’d begun to push inside.
She’d closed her eyes, mouth opening on a sigh as she tried to relax her sudden tension at his invasion. If he were aware of her anxiety, it didn’t cause him to hesitate.
With one sure, hard thrust, he entered her, driving deeper inside her body than she thought she could bear. His hips ground against hers, straining for an even greater penetration.
She must have made a sound in response. There was a fractional pause and then a minute shift of his body, so that, although they were still joined in that most intimate of connections, her body no longer bore the full weight of his.
His lips brushed against her hair before he lowered his forehead to rest on hers. “Shh…” he whispered. “Shh…”
Since no one could possibly hear her, even if she had cried out, obviously that was meant to soothe. As if he were quieting a fearful child. And in comparison to his surety and control, that’s how she felt.
As in her bedroom, his hand found her breast. His thumb began again that slow back-and-forth movement against its nipple. Despite the apprehension she’d experienced, she gradually began to relax.
His body made no more demands. And by now, she had become accustomed to the feeling of fullness, recognizing it was part of the masculine strength that had drawn her to him from the first.
There was another shift of weight, this time a withdrawal. Afraid that her attack of nerves was responsible, she had opened her mouth to protest when he pushed into her again—harder, stronger, more powerfully than before. Testing, it seemed, the very limits of her body.
From deep within her came a reaction that had nothing to do with fear or apprehension. Unconsciously she raised her hips, reacting to his downward thrust.
Joined as they were, it was impossible he wasn’t aware of her response. Whatever doubts she’d had seemed to dissipate as he began again to make that slow, controlled withdrawal.
Her muscles, acting of their own volition, tightened around his arousal, sheathing it as if to prevent his desertion. Then, before she was prepared, he drove into her again. And then, without giving her time to breathe or to think, if she’d been capable of either, again.
He turned his cheek against the tender skin of her throat. His late-night stubble was abrasive, a sensation that warred with the other that had begun to grow within her body.
No longer discomfort, but something that had had been born from the friction of his driving caress. A heat that wouldn’t be denied. And could no longer be contained.
It ran in molten streams, searing along nerve pathways throughout her lower body. Melting all resistance and restraint. Destroying inhibition until she was no longer conscious of anything but the motion of his body as it strained above hers.
A tremor began in the very core of the flame he’d ignited. And then another. Faster and faster, until there was no space and no time between them. A continual ecstasy that left her hips arching to meet his every stoke, mindlessly matching the rhythm he’d established.
Already he’d taken her beyond the boundaries of her experience. She clung to the unraveling edge of her control, afraid to let go. Afraid, too, that if she refused, he would leave her behind. Alone and again bereft.
She could tell from his frenzied, almost convulsive movements that he was close to his own release. She wanted that—for him as well as for her—and yet she feared it, too.
A step into the unknown. Or a leap of faith. Whichever it was, she realized, the moment to make it was at hand.
She could let him take her with him. Or she could retreat, refusing to surrender the last dregs of a control she hadn’t dreamed, until this moment, she would resist giving up.
She had believed that was part of why she’d sought this. To relinquish her control. To acknowledge his in this, as she had in the other.
His breath came in short, ragged exhalations. She could feel his heart against her breasts, pounding as if it would tear its way out of his chest. So near. So near.
She wanted that, too. To be swept away from a reality she longed to deny to a place where she would no longer have to think, but only to feel. The sweat-slick dampness of his skin sliding over hers. Hair-roughened legs against the smoothness of hers. The hard wall of his chest pressing her breasts.
As the pressure built, screaming for the release that waited now only for her capitulation, her fingers found the coarse aliveness of the midnight hair.
His head lifted, neck straining backward, as the cataclysm began. Her control spiraled away into the darkness, finally lost as wave after wave of sensation broke over them. They clung together, riding out the storm they’d created.
When it was over, they lay together, still one, still joined, in the oldest communion. Incapable of speech, almost incapable of coherent thought, she finally lifted her hand, allowing the tips of her fingers to move slowly through his hair. To express with their touch all the feelings for which she had no words.
After a moment, he raised his head, propping on his elbows to look down on her again in the darkness. With his thumb, he pushed a strand of damp hair off her cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
That single dark brow arched, questioning. “For…?”
“Being sure.”
“Half of command is commanding.”
“Meaning…you weren’t sure?”
“I was sure I wanted you. And sure it would be like this. As for the rest…I told you at the start this wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”
She had already acknowledged that was probably true for her as well. Despite that, she had no regrets. She had gotten what she’d wanted.
To forget, at least for the moment. And to have Sean beside her, keeping that reality at bay.
One more day. One more night. One more hour.
Twenty-Three
Not the smartest thing he’d ever done.
Understatement of the year. Yet knowing that, openly acknowledging it, he had still made love to her.
Dr. Jenna Kincaid. The last woman in the world he should have come on to. Especially now. Especially here.
He
turned away from the breakfast room window overlooking the pool to check on the coffee he’d started. The pot was full, so the brewing cycle was obviously complete.
It had taken him longer to figure out how to operate the damn thing than it had for the coffee to brew. State of the art. Like the security system. Like everything else about this place. All of it as far removed from his world as she was.
His hand hesitated in the act of lifting the carafe. That distance hadn’t seemed to exist last night. Not in any way that mattered. And this morning…
This morning they would have to deal with what had happened. A complication that, like it or not, had forever changed their relationship.
In the cold light of dawn, Sean had discovered that, as great as last night had been, he didn’t know how to deal with that alteration. He had never meant to get involved with her. Not like this. Now that he had—
His cell rang, startling him out of the circling thoughts that had troubled him since he’d slipped out of bed before dawn. He realized he was still holding the handle of the carafe, his cup unfilled. He put it down, reaching into the pocket of his jeans to fish out his phone.
He flipped it open. “Murphy.”
“We got ourselves a witness.” Bingham’s voice held a note of triumph, as if he’d been the one to come up with the scenario that had garnered this, the cops’ first break.
“And?”
Sean told himself that whatever this was, it might not lead anywhere. Creeps came out of the woodwork in a murder investigation, especially one as high profile as this. Despite all those caveats, his heart began to pound as he waited.
“Gray car. Maybe silver. Sedan. She thinks it was an import. Something ‘ridiculously expensive,’ to use her words.”
Far less than he’d hoped for, Sean acknowledged, considering the lieutenant’s excitement. And he would have been more confident if the description of the car had come from a man. Maybe that was sexist, but he’d never met a woman who was good with identifying makes or models. Automobiles were too much alike these days to overcome what he’d always seen as an inherently feminine disinterest. Maybe Bingham’s witness was the exception, but from the lack of detail, he doubted it. Still, it was more than they’d had yesterday.