Sam hadn’t allowed her to explore nearly enough in their first encounter and now she ached to touch him. She reached for him, and pressed the base of his shaft against her, making them both moan. She used both hands to stroke him up and back down again, to trace the veins that twined around the arching column, to squeeze the helmeted tip until the muscles of Sam’s thighs were quivering with the strain of holding back his release.
“Perai, woman, you have to stop!” He captured her hands in both of his and shuddered with pleasure. Then he stood for so long without moving that Rayna feared he would turn and leave her here, alone, burning for him. The thought made her heart pound.
He lifted a hand to her face, a universe of emotion in his eyes. The words hung between them, unsaid.
He pushed her back onto the gurney and ran his fingertips down her body from collarbone to hip. Once. And again. She shivered under his touch, wanting more. Wanting the warmth of his hands, the smooth heat of his tongue, the hard length of his shaft. When he lifted her calves to his shoulders and bent to taste her, she whimpered in anticipation. At the first flick of his tongue, she bucked into his mouth in an agony of sensation. He splayed his hands across her hips to hold her in place as he tasted and teased, driving her straight up and over the screaming peak of a climax so intense she thrashed under him like a wild thing.
And just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, he lifted his head and flipped her so only her upper body rested on the gurney and her backside and thighs came snugly up against his hips. Oh, God, yes! She pushed back against the ridge of his erection, making sure he knew she approved. He didn’t waste time, only gave that rumble of satisfaction she was beginning to recognize, and joined them in one fluid motion.
God, with every stroke he went deeper and she burned hotter. The flames spread from her melting core to her clenching belly, from her gasping lungs to her hands clutching the gurney sheets and her legs shaking to hold steady against his strength. For a long delirious time she just reveled in that heat, letting him fill her up with it, feeling his thick steel stoke the fire until it flared white-hot. Then he reached around to press rhythmic circles into the sensitive flesh above where they were joined. Need flared deep in her core.
“Now, baby,” he whispered into her ear. “Come for me.”
He quickened the pace, and she shot right over the edge of a precipice she hadn’t even known was there. Every muscle clenched as she moaned his name into the mattress, ecstasy rolling through her in waves from her core and her belly to her fingers and toes. On some other level of consciousness she was aware he wrapped her up in both his arms and held her tight, pounding into her with heavy, filling strength to meet the demands of her greedy body as the climax rolled on and on.
At last the sharp edges of orgasm began to soften into the sweet slopes of satisfaction. She turned her attention to Sam now, growing impossibly harder deep inside her as he neared his own release. She arched her back and pushed back against him. He pulled in a breath and let it out in a growl of pure male delight. She smiled as his strokes grew faster, deeper, as both hands went to her hips to pull her in closer. She had thought she would just enjoy feeling him come, but the way he was moving inside her slick channel was . . . Jesus God, that feels good!
And still he stroked in and out of her, so hot, so demanding, until the climax rose up to overwhelm her. She gave in to it, lost in her body’s response to him, while he let himself go at last, his seed emptying into her in furious jets.
Then, as if she were waking from some kind of erotic dream, it was over. They lay together in a boneless heap, unable, unwilling to move. Her heart raced like she had been running a marathon, and the blood thrummed in her core where he still rested, warm and semi-hard. God, no one had ever loved her like that before. Sam Murphy was beyond her experience. And somehow she knew it was not just about the sex.
She felt the loss when he slid out of her and backed away to search the shelves of the room for a towel. But he flashed her a smile when he came back that slipped past her guard and touched her heart. She accepted the towel from him and cleaned up, feeling a little shy now that it was all over. She reached for her clothes, but he put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Not yet.” He gestured at the gurney. “It won’t be very comfortable, but . . .” He shrugged and offered up a grin. “We never did have that talk.”
She stifled her own grin. The pirate captain feared throughout the galaxy wanted to cuddle? Well, who was she to complain? He’d just given her three mind-blowing orgasms, the least she could do was spend some time scrunched together on a narrow medical cot.
But in truth, as she settled in under his arm, her head resting in the crook of his shoulder, her hand tracing circles on his smooth, broad chest and hard belly, there was no place she’d rather be. This felt natural. And right. She slid a leg over his thigh, and when she heard him rumble in satisfaction, she sighed.
His hand smoothed her dark curls, traced the line of her jaw and finally tipped her chin up to meet his gaze. “So tell me, Little Bit. That wasn’t just my imagination. It was good for you, right?”
She flushed hot and a grin took over her face. “You couldn’t tell by the way I was screaming your name? Yes, God, it was good, baby.”
“And last night? That was good, too?”
“It was incredible.” She raised up on one elbow to look at him. “And I never said so, did I. Jesus, I’m sorry, I –”
“Not my point.” He grinned. “Well, not exactly. A man always likes to hear that he’s done a good job.” The smile faded. “What I want to know is why you ran, Rayna. We had something last night, and then you ran. Now we’re here, and I want to know if you plan on running again.”
She was caught, and her heart started a slow thud in her chest. “Running is the only safe thing to do with you, Murphy.” She tried to keep her tone light, but failed.
“Safe? You want safe? The woman who was willing to hide away on a slave ship to sneak into the most secure arms factory in the galaxy?” He teased her with a warm light in his eyes and a smile playing around his lips, but she knew he could be hurt by her answer. She knew because the truth of it was already causing her pain.
She touched his cheek. “You’re a lot more dangerous than any job.”
His hand covered hers. “I won’t hurt you, Rayna.”
“How can you not?” She pulled away and sat up. “You’re a pirate, for chrissake.”
“Yes. A pirate who loves you.”
She gaped at him. “What?”
He stared back. “You heard me.”
“You can’t possibly love me. We’ve only known each other a few days!” But she looked at him and knew it was true. Worse, she knew the edge of the cliff she’d been teetering on had finally given way under her feet. She was falling, too, and unless Sam caught her, there was no hope for her.
In Sam’s eyes was a swirl of emotion—elation, apprehension, determination. “I knew it the minute I saw you, Little Bit. You’re all I’ve been thinking about ever since.”
“You’re crazy.” But her heart was triple-timing in her chest. For him.
“Then why are you smiling at me like that?” He sat up and gathered her in his arms. He held her close, the muscles of his chest hard under her cheek, his skin warm and smooth. “Say you love me, too. You know you do.”
“You think I’m as crazy as you are?” She’d tried so hard not to love him, but from the first he’d stolen her heart and nothing would persuade it to leave him. His pulse beat wild and strong under her ear as he waited for her answer. “All right, then, yes, I admit it. I love you. Are you happy now?”
He held her tighter. “Ecstatic.”
She went hot from her head to her toes, and all her smart-ass attitude melted in the glow. “Me, too.”
He brought her lips up to meet his kiss and she was lost again, in his taste, in his tongue’s slow exploration of her mouth, in the heat building between them once more. He broke it off, onl
y to murmur, “I need to be inside you,” sending a thrill of need straight through her from her core to her heart. She straddled him and took him in, joining them in one, smooth glide. He caressed her with his gaze as much as with his hands as she rode him, and she abandoned herself to the feel of him deep inside. They took their time, a slow, steamy push all the way to the top. And when she came, her whole body gave in to him, responding with a depth and power and emotion she’d never felt before.
Sam wrapped Rayna in his arms and held her while his heartbeat evened out and his breath returned to normal. Gods, she’d been magnificent, her perfect body arched in pleasure over his, her face a portrait of beauty lost to sensation. But then she had looked at him, and everything he felt for her had been reflected in her eyes. His heart had swelled in his chest, sending an arrow of fresh desire through him. And when she’d come, he’d followed her into paradise with a shout of joy.
Now he knew he was in trouble, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. She was warm and soft and here in his arms. He’d worry about the broken heart—and Mo was right, there was sure to be one—later.
“Damn, sweets, what am I supposed to do now?” Rayna’s whisper blew a gentle breath across his chest. He supposed she was trying for her usual smart-ass tone, but she sounded sad, so sad. “I’m gonna need a regular fix of that . . . And it’s a big, freakin’ galaxy.”
He pushed a stray hair back out of her face. “We’ll find each other. And, trust me, if you try to ditch me, I’ll come looking for you.”
She smiled up at him. “You know, I believe you would.” The smile dissolved, and she looked away. “So. We’ll just have to get used to a long time between dates, I guess.”
She didn’t believe they were capable of maintaining even that much; he could read it in the slight trembling of her tiny body. He held her tighter.
“We’ll do whatever we have to. I won’t be without you.”
She kissed his chest and snuggled closer with a sigh.
Seeing her once every few fiftydays would never be enough for him; he knew that deep down. He needed her in some fundamental way, needed to go to sleep beside her every night, wake up beside her every morning. She answered some growling primal call in him, and without her whatever it was that called out would grow wild and unmanageable. But Sam knew better than to try and swallow this problem in one gulp. He would gnaw at it until it was bite-size.
“If your crew ever discovers how soft you are on the inside, you might have a mutiny on your hands.” Rayna was smiling up at him as she said this, teasing. “I don’t know what you’ve done with Captain Snark. I’m beginning to worry about him.”
Sam grunted in amusement. “I suspect my crew is already on to me. And ‘Captain Snark’? That’s just . . . a little too close to the truth. But it does remind me: I have a ship to run.” He gave her a last, lingering kiss and disengaged, rolling off the gurney to land on his feet with the grace of a cat. He cast about in the dim light, looking for the towel he’d found earlier.
Rayna watched him from the gurney, propped up on one elbow in a pose so seductive his cock twitched in appreciation. “Did you lose something?”
“Yes. My resolve if I don’t find that towel so I can get cleaned up and dressed in about ten seconds.”
“Should we turn on the lights?”
He squatted down on his haunches to peek under the gurney and enjoyed a brief boost of triumph as his hand closed on the square of terry cloth. But something else caught his eye—a tiny blink of red light in the far corner on the underside of a shelf. He couldn’t see what was generating the light, a modest rhythm of low-emission winks that would have been hidden from anywhere else in the room. What the hell? Maybe just a power indicator, but . . .
“Sam?”
He stood and used the towel, then found a clean one for Rayna. “Sorry. I saw something under there that I need to check out. We’ll have to move this.” He put a hand on the gurney.
“Something? What kind of something?”
“Not sure. Maybe nothing.” He had a bad feeling about it all the same.
Rayna was cleaned up and dressed in less than a minute. They hit the lights and saw that the gurney was pushed up close to the storage unit that extended along the far wall of the small room. There was a monitoring station on the left wall closer to the center of the room that indicated the gurney should more properly have been placed there.
Rayna blushed. “Did we move that gurney? I mean, I know we—”
“I don’t think so. It felt solid to me. It’s not quite up against the cabinets, so the wheels must be locked.”
“So somebody else moved it.”
“Come on.” He reached underneath the gurney to release the wheels, then the two of them moved the bed away from the storage unit and back to the center of the room where it belonged. Sam made a mental note to strip the sheets. He turned back to the cabinets, where Rayna was already crouched in the corner.
She’d opened a sliding door in the bottom unit. Now she looked up at him, her lips set in a thin, hard line.
“Captain, we have a problem.”
Fully revealed, the red light blinked even brighter, sitting on top of a handmade plasmion bomb big enough to blast a hole the size of a small asteroid through the deck of Sam Murphy’s ship.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Security Chief Chen, the ship’s XO, Sam and Rayna stood to one side while a crew member who normally worked the cargo deck examined the bomb. As Sam had explained it, Chule Fl’x had grown up fighting Thrane occupation on her home planet of Oxtra—and had the most munitions expertise of anyone onboard.
“I doubt this is the only one of these on the ship, Cap,” Chen said. “Sure, this one is big enough to take out this section, but Sickbay is hardly crucial to continued functioning of the ship.”
Sam nodded. “All right, we’re gonna give this ship a tongue bath. Institute a search, everybody working in their own section, cabin and workspace. As soon as Chule figures out what we’re dealing with we’ll put together a squad to take care of what we find.”
Rayna couldn’t help it; she grinned—but she kept her voice low. “A tongue bath, really?” She ignored Sam when he scowled at her. “What about the bastards who planted these things?”
His scowl deepened as he turned to his Security head. “What about it, Mei?”
“I’ve got two-person patrols in the corridors, in Engineering, in the auxiliary control rooms, guarding the bridge and searching cargo, the shuttle bay and hull space. Any other ideas, Cap?”
“Oh, shit!” Rayna turned and looked at Sam with her mouth open in astonishment. A tall Thrane, dark hair, broad shoulders—“I think I saw him!”
“What?” Sam grabbed her elbow and squeezed. “What are you talking about?”
“Just before we, uh, saw each other in the corridor, someone came out that door.” She pointed at the door leading to the outside from the room next door. “He was Thrane, and I got a good look at him. I just assumed he was crew, coming from Doc Berta’s office. Do you have images of your Thrane crew members?”
Chen moved to her side and punched up the images on her pad. “Sure. Take a look.”
Rayna studied the faces, then shook her head. “Nope. This guy was better looking—the kind that makes you look twice. Tall. Big shoulders. Sharp angles to his face. Dark, dark eyes.”
Sam growled. “Great. Our bomber is also a multimix star.”
Rayna frowned at the newly-returned Captain Snark. “Just trying to give a description here. What else do you need, Chief?”
“That should be enough to start with. I’ll send the description to all the teams.” Chen’s gaze shot back and forth between Rayna and Sam. “And thanks, Agent Carver.”
“Hope it helps.” Rayna made sure to make eye contact with Murphy as she spoke. Now that the veer was out of the air vent about her job title, she wasn’t going to be shy about using her training.
A glint of amusement in his eyes was his only acknowledge
ment—and apology. “Chule—anything?”
The munitions tech rocked back on her heels. “Looks pretty simple, Cap. Whoever put it here didn’t figure on it being found or he would’ve made it harder to disarm. Clear the area and give me a suit and I’ll have it done in a couple of minutes.”
Sam and Rayna both spat a curse at the same time. Chen and Mo looked grim.
Chule looked up at them in confusion. “Uh, sir? Isn’t that good news?”
“It would be if there was any hope this was the only bomb on board.” Sam ran a hand through his hair. “Simple and slapdash only confirms he’s hidden these things all over the ship.”
The towering XO nodded. “And we’re due at C4 in a little over eight hours. We hit jump with even one of these things onboard—”
“—and we’ll come out the other side in bite-size pieces. We need to find the bombs—all of them. And we need to find the mulaak bastards who planted them. Now.” His voice was soft, so soft, but there was no mistaking the steel behind it. “Go.”
“I’ll, uh, go get the disposal equipment, Cap,” Chule said, and left the room with the others.
Rayna put a hand on Sam’s arm, found it rock hard with tension. “I want your permission to join the search teams in hull space.”
“No.” He started to pull away, but she held on tight and he was forced to answer. “This isn’t your business, Ray. Let us take care of it.”
“Your business is my business, now, Sam, and I can help. I’m sure that bomber and his girlfriend are hiding in hull space.”
Sam’s eyebrows lifted. “His girlfriend?”
Fools Rush In (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3) Page 12