Pearl Cove

by Elizabeth Lowell

  He stopped breathing.

  “Hannah?” he said thickly.

  “Don’t worry—” pleasure arced through her, making her rigid, shattering her voice “—about a baby. I don’t expect— Oh, God, take me.”

  His thumb moved, two fingers probed deeply, and the tension coiled inside her burst. Shaking, making broken sounds that could have been his name, she clung to him while waves of violent pleasure convulsed her.

  Watching her through narrowed eyes, Archer smiled despite the sexual heat that sent sweat sliding down his spine. He wasn’t inside her, but he was so close that her climax kissed his penis with hot, teasing pulses. All that kept him from pushing her against the wall and taking her was a need he had just discovered. He wanted to see her eyes while he buried himself inside her, to watch them widen and then go hazy with pleasure when she discovered just how good it felt when they were completely locked together.

  “Put your legs around my waist.”

  Hannah hardly recognized the rough voice as Archer’s, but she tightened her arms around his neck and drew herself up his body. She couldn’t have done it without the strength of his arms supporting her, his big hands lifting and spreading her legs until she could cross her ankles behind his waist. The hard, smooth head of his erection nuzzled against her undefended core. She was entirely open to him, entirely vulnerable . . . .

  And she smiled. She had been helpless in his arms before, and he had given her pleasure. Pure, blazing fire.

  She wanted more.

  Archer was heading for the bedroom until Hannah shifted herself against him, shivered, and hitched herself over him, all the while watching him like a cat that had just discovered cream. The sensation of her slick heat on his aroused flesh made his heart stop.

  “That’s it,” he said hoarsely.

  “What?”

  Her voice was as husky as his. He sank to the floor, never releasing her, never letting the blunt head of his erection move from its lush nest. “I was going to give you a bed.”

  Cool tile met her sweaty back. “I don’t want it.”

  “Your back—”

  “Your front,” she cut in.

  He blinked. “What about it?”

  “Mine,” she said. Her hands went to his hips and her fingers pushed beneath his swimsuit, fully freeing him. He jerked against her, groaning. In fiery silence she measured him, wondering if it had been so long since Len was capable that she had forgotten what an aroused man was like, or if Archer was simply big. She could hardly wait to feel herself stretching around him, discovering all the other things she had forgotten about sex . . . and discovering other things she had never known. Like this slow, teasing sensuality. It was completely new to her, completely delicious. “Definitely. Mine.”

  He gave a crack of laughter even as he shuddered with the pleasure of her hands stroking him, savoring him with frank female approval. “Yours, huh? I don’t know how to break this to you, sweetheart, but I come with it.”

  She fought against a delicious bubble of laughter. “You sure?”

  “Damn sure.”

  One fingertip circled him like a lazy tongue, spreading the few drops he couldn’t hold back. “Then I guess we’ll just have to share.”

  Sweat gathered and ran over Archer’s clenched body. He was so close to the edge, closer than he had ever been without giving in. With each heartbeat, the head of his penis nudged against her sultry core. Each heartbeat told him what he already knew. She was hot, wet, ready.

  And the climax was pulsing up the base of his spine.

  “Hannah, look at me.”

  Her half-closed eyes opened wide as he thrust into her, hot and deep and hard. She felt even better than he had expected, so tight he knew he should be afraid of hurting her. But it was much too late for fear. He could no more pull back from her than he could strip off his own skin.

  He hooked his arms beneath her legs, lifting them, opening her even more, stretching her around him. Her eyes went dark, then blind with pleasure. Hot ripples licked up from her core, sensual contractions that drew him deeper. The feel of her trembling and tugging at him made him wild. His eyes and mind went blank and he felt nothing but the slow mating of their bodies.

  Then he was buried deep within her, fully sheathed. The first pulse of release ripped through him. He tried to hold back, wanting to stop time so that he would always be as he was right now, feeling her climax radiate in delicate convulsions, feeling his own power pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, pleasure consuming him, overpowering him, devouring him.

  And then it freed him in a world gone red and black and blind.

  Smiling even as she fought for breath, for sanity, Hannah kissed Archer’s eyelids, his nose, his lips, his neck beneath the sleek black beard. Her fingers combed over his hair and down his back, then up again, and with every stroke she nuzzled against his beard, licking and nibbling. When he began to get up, she made an unhappy sound and tried to hold him right where he was.

  “Even with my weight on my elbows, I’m flattening you,” Archer said.

  Hannah shook her head. She didn’t want him to get up, didn’t want the closeness to end and the cold to begin. She had learned with Len that it might be weeks before he came to her again. “You feel wonderful.”

  “You feel better.” Archer shifted his hips just a bit and smiled to hear her breath break. He was still hard. She was still soft. The combination was dizzying.

  For both of them.

  “Impossible,” Hannah said, her voice husky. “There’s no word for better than wonderful.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “What is it?” she challenged.

  “Hannah.”

  She laughed softly and went back to exploring his face with her mouth. Len had rarely allowed this kind of sensual freedom, and never after sex, but Archer wasn’t pushing away from her. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying it. She liked that as much as she liked having him stay deep inside her.

  Eyes closed, smiling, Archer enjoyed Hannah’s caressing hands and nuzzling kisses, her tongue tasting first his beard, then his neck, then the tender skin behind his ear. When she nibbled around his ear and explored the center with her tongue, heat flickered over his skin like lightning.

  “You keep that up and you’re going to wish you weren’t on the bottom,” he said.

  Her answer was a low, questioning sound, because she was too fascinated by the contours of his ear to bother shaping words. Then she felt his hips clench. Suddenly he was locked hard against her, moving in short, powerful jerks that made her limp with a shocking pleasure. But nothing was as shocking as feeling him stretching her again, as though it had been weeks since his last climax.

  “Archer?”

  “Hang on.” He rolled over onto his back, taking her with him, shifting her until she lay on top of him, thigh to thigh, chest to breasts. When the tile hit his back, he grunted, but it wasn’t his bruises that bothered him most. “You should have told me.”

  “What?”

  “How cold the tile was.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “The least you can do is return the favor.”

  Reluctantly Hannah started to get up. Big hands held her where she was, pinned against him, still deliciously impaled on him. She gave him a questioning look.

  “Make me forget about the tile, Hannah.”

  She didn’t understand until she looked at his eyes. And then she could hardly believe it. The intensity of his hunger made her whole body tighten with pleasure, stroking him where he lay buried within her.

  “That’s a good start,” he said, his voice raspy.

  He shifted his feet until they were between her ankles. Slowly he opened his legs inside hers, stretching her wide. Her eyes came fully open in startled pleasure. He was hard against the violently sensitive knot of her clitoris. The more he pushed apart her legs, the more pleasure licked through her, and the more need gnawed at her. She moved as much as she could against him, inching her hips back and
forth until she shivered against him, around him.

  It wasn’t enough. She could tease both of them to the edge of release, but no more. Trapped on a sensual rack, she writhed slowly, seeking release and at the same time luxuriating in a ravishing kind of pleasure. She knew nothing about making love like this, about need that grew and grew and grew, climax leading to climax and yet nothing was enough, never enough, until she was shaking, whimpering, struggling against and with him, crying and wild.

  And then she was free, grinding against him as wave after wave of pleasure slammed into her. She would have screamed if she could have, but all she could do was arch her back and give herself to the endless, wrenching ecstasy.

  Archer watched through burning gray-green eyes, moving just enough to drive her higher, rubbing against the sleek, hot pearl of her pleasure until she was abandoned, crying, utterly surrendered to him and wholly victorious at the same time, driving him as surely as he drove her, taking him to the same shattering completion she knew, holding him there, burning, pulsing, drowning him in ecstasy.

  It was a long, long time before either of them noticed the tile floor again.

  Twelve

  The bathroom was still steamy from their shared shower. So was Hannah. The fact that Archer had been obviously ready for sex again by the time he left the shower hadn’t helped to cool her off. Wistfully she toweled herself dry and watched the closed bathroom door. She hadn’t expected him to want her again. Not so soon. That he did both surprised and aroused her.

  He might be as ruthless as Len, but Archer was certainly different when it came to sex. She liked that difference. A lot. Knowing that he wanted her even before the sweat dried from the last time made her light-headed with too many emotions to name, even if she had wanted to.

  She didn’t. The shimmering sexuality she had discovered within Archer—and herself—was more than enough for her to cope with at the moment.

  “No wonder Coco can’t wait to get past a man’s fly,” Hannah muttered, wrapping the towel around herself.

  “What?” Archer asked from beyond the door.

  Even as she flushed, she smiled a cream-licking kind of smile. It was still on her face when she opened the bathroom door. “I said, ‘No wonder Coco can’t wait to get past a man’s fly.’ ”

  He smiled despite the familiar stab of heat in his crotch when he saw the rise of her breasts against the white towel, a towel that was too small to entirely cover the dark nest of curls between her legs. All that kept him from kneeling and burying his face in those curls was the clock ticking in his head, the damned clock that told him he was running late. They should be on their way to Broome by now. Yet there were so many things he wanted to do to her, for her, with her; a whole world of sensuality waiting for them.

  It had waited for ten years, Archer told himself. It will wait a little longer. The fact that he wanted to suck on her tender flesh now—right now—was too damn bad. He was old enough to control himself.

  Or he had been, up until an hour ago, when he had laid her down on the tile floor and found out just how much he had been missing in life.

  “What do you usually wear when you go to Broome on errands?” he asked.

  Hannah didn’t miss the thickening of his voice, or the silver flicker of heat in his eyes as he looked at the bottom of the towel that almost covered her. “Shorts. A tank top. Sandals.”

  “The usual, huh?”

  She nodded.

  “Underwear?” he asked.

  “Bikini bottoms. Bras are too hot in the rain months. Why? Do you have some kind of thing for underwear?”

  He laughed even as his body tightened. “If it’s yours, I have a thing for it.”

  “And I know just where you keep it.” Smiling, she looked at the Aussie walking shorts he was wearing. It was her new smile, the one that told Archer just how much she had enjoyed being his lover. And that she was looking forward to being his lover again.

  Soon.

  “Get dressed, Hannah. My good intentions are getting even smaller than that damned towel you’re almost wearing.”

  “Who needs good intentions?”

  “I do. It had been a long time for you. You’re going to be sore enough without an instant replay.”

  “How about a slow replay?”

  “Even worse.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Damn.” She sighed. “I’ll get dressed.”

  She turned away, only to go still when Archer’s palm slid up the inside of her thigh and tenderly cupped the soft curls.

  “I’m sorry I was rough,” he said quietly.

  She stared over her shoulder at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “Archer, have you looked in the mirror? I left marks on you!”

  He grinned. “Did I forget to thank you?”

  “Yes. No! Bloody hell, the point is you didn’t bite me or scratch me. I was a lot harder on you than you were on me.”

  “I’ll make it up to you when you’re not sore.” Gently he skimmed her hidden sex, parting soft folds. The flesh heated, moistened, until his fingertips were damp, too. “God, I wish this was my tongue.”

  Her eyelids flickered down and her legs trembled as she focused on the sweet caresses he was giving her, barely penetrating her with a fingertip, for all the world as though he was tasting her. “How do you know just how to touch me?”

  “I’ve had ten years to think about it.”

  He entered her tenderly once, twice, then withdrew so slowly that her head tilted back as though it was suddenly too heavy to hold upright.

  “Get dressed, sweetheart. Think of me thinking about you. Think of all those things I want to do to you. Think of things you want to do to me. I’ll wait for you outside.”

  Archer turned and left the room quickly, while he still could. The sweet heat and ease of her response made his blood burn and his mind go blank.

  The front door closed hard. Hannah sighed and opened her eyes. She was alone in the bedroom.

  And she was thinking about Archer thinking about her.

  She dressed by habit, picked up her purse, put on her sunglasses, and headed for the front door. When she stepped out into the white violence of the sun, she stopped dead. Archer was there as he had said he would be, backpack slung over one shoulder, waiting for her.

  And Coco was standing close enough to him that her hard-tipped breasts rubbed his bare chest every time she took a breath.

  “Something wrong, Coco?” Hannah asked.

  Coco’s black eyes gleamed as they roamed again over the man who had introduced himself only as Archer, the man who had neither backed up nor moved toward her. He was tall and rangy, with the kind of strength that made her wonder how long it would take to wear him out with sex. Men were strange that way. Some of the big ones were used up quick. Some of the wiry ones had amazing stamina, like Tom Nakamori, whenever she got around to allowing him in her bed. Whichever kind Archer was, he was obviously and impressively aroused.

  “Coco?” Hannah repeated, her voice sharp. Normally Coco’s effect on men was amusing, but seeing Archer standing so close made her angry.

  “The dive,” Coco said, reluctantly shifting her attention to her employer. “Was it good?”

  “It went fine,” Archer said before Hannah could answer. “We found some shell.”

  “Much?”

  “Not enough to make a difference,” Hannah said briskly. “Where’s Christian?”

  “He still bad.”

  Hannah made an impatient sound. When Christian had called and begged off giving her a report because he was feeling ill, Archer hadn’t believed him. Neither had she, but there wasn’t a great deal they could do right now.

  “We won’t be able to decide how to put Pearl Cove back together until he finishes his report,” she said curtly. “Has he seen a doctor?”

  Coco shrugged. “That one? I no think so.”

  “Bloody hell,” Hannah mutte
red. “I’m going to Broome to run errands. Anything you need?”

  With a lazy kind of thoroughness, Coco looked Archer over again. “Oui, but is not in Broome.”

  Hannah knew she should laugh and leave Coco to it, as she had so many other times with other men. Yet even as Hannah lectured herself, she couldn’t look at Archer. If he responded to Coco’s open invitation, Hannah didn’t know what she would do.

  Expression neutral, Archer watched Coco. Despite his body’s stubborn arousal and her lush breasts brushing against him, he didn’t want her. It was Hannah who made his blood heat, not the undoubtedly accomplished Ms. Dupres.

  “Ready, sweetheart?” Archer said, turning away from Coco.

  Coco saw the change in him when he looked at Hannah. The heightened tension, the narrowed eyes, the sheer sexuality radiating like heat boiling up from a fire. With a shrug, Coco conceded the field to Hannah. For now, anyway. Archer wasn’t the first man to sniff after Sister McGarry. When he realized that she wasn’t interested in sex, he would remember Coco.

  And she would remember that he had once turned his back on her. She would make him pay before she climbed on and rode him until he was raw. The thought made her smile and stretch like a lazy cat.

  “When will you be back?” Coco asked Hannah.

  “Tomorrow,” Archer said.

  Hannah gave him a surprised look. “I shouldn’t be gone that long.”

  “You need a break.”

  She looked at his eyes, more steel than heat now, silently commanding her to agree. “I hear the hotels along Cable Beach have Jacuzzis in the rooms,” she said after a moment.

  His smile gleamed whitely against his sleek beard. “Big enough for two?”

  Dubiously Hannah measured Archer’s length. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll take the bottom. You take the top. Plenty of room that way.”

  The thought of having Archer in a Jacuzzi with water fizzing all around appealed to Hannah. She smiled slowly, thinking of the possibilities. It was her new smile, the one that made Archer want to strip off her shorts and take her right there.