by Tawny Weber
She could feel the rumbling motion. So she was on the train.
Warm sunshine glowed behind her closed lids. So it was early afternoon.
The duvet was light and comforting over her body, the mattress soft and giving beneath her. So she was still in bed.
And there was a hard body wrapped around her back, one arm thrown over her waist. Her body was awash in a lusty sort of awareness, her nipples aching and the damp heat between her thighs needy.
She wasn’t dreaming.
Her eyes flew open and, without moving her head, she glanced down at the hand pressed against her belly. Just there, within inches of relieving that damp, hot need.
Holy shit.
She was in bed with Hunter.
Again.
How did this keep happening?
She should get up.
She should rip herself out of his arms, jump from the bed and throw a fit. Accuse him of taking advantage of her. Of sneaky napping practices. She should be outraged.
She snuggled deeper instead, breathing deep the scent of his skin, letting the warmth seep into her muscles, relaxing her even more.
Outrage?
She wasn’t sure she could force herself out of his arms even if the train were on fire.
God, he felt good.
Hard and solid.
Warm and safe.
Comforting and, oh, yeah, she wiggled her butt just a little against his groin, he felt sexy.
“Do that one more time and you’re going to have to deal with the results,” he murmured sleepily against her hair.
Her breath caught in her throat. She was tempted. Oh, so very tempted.
And in this second, with Hunter’s arms tight around her and his erection pressing its delicious length along her tush, she couldn’t think of a single reason not to give in to that temptation.
At least, not a single reason she cared about.
* * *
HUNTER WAITED, EVERY FACET of his being hoping she’d wiggle her ass again. Just like he’d hoped, every night on this train, that she’d hang her head over the edge of that damned bunk and tell him she’d changed her mind.
That she wanted to strip them both naked and play a few rounds of count the climaxes.
He knew better.
Over the past few days, she’d been sweet. She’d been friendly. She’d been fun and entertaining and sexy as hell.
She’d also been sticking to her no.
Still, a guy woke from a dead sleep to find his fantasy woman in his bed, he was bound to hope.
Hunter was used to catnaps. His was a job of long hours and odd sleeping arrangements, so he’d taught himself early on to snatch enough energy from fifteen, twenty minutes of shut-eye to let him power through.
He’d opened his eyes, and there she was, like a fairy-tale princess, waiting under the covers.
He hadn’t been able to resist climbing in with her. Both to freak her out, because he loved that chiding look she gave him, and because he was weak. Yes, he admitted it to himself. He was weak enough to take whatever chance he could get to wrap his arms around the delicate blonde. To hold her, breathe in her scent, to tempt his body with the feel of her curves.
And yeah, to hope she’d be tempted right back.
Enough to change her no to a hell yes.
He’d been doing a damned good job of avoiding Marni so far.
Focusing on the case. Scouring the files his agents had taken from Charles Burns’s secret safes. Delving into the computer drive they’d recovered from a house nobody realized he owned. The information Beverly Burns had turned over was a gold mine. So much so that Hunter was taking an extra careful pass to make sure it was all real. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the woman’s fury against her husband trying to blow her up along with his building. But Hunter had an innate wariness of gift horses who were angling for a deep cover in WitSec, and a fat payoff to continue the luxurious life they felt they deserved.
He’d be a lot further if he’d been getting sleep.
The first night, he’d blamed it on his body’s aches. A taped rib wasn’t comfortable to sleep on, and the constant motion of the train was doing weird things to his ruptured eardrum.
The second night, he decided it was that, plus the fact that the only time he slept with another person in the room—unless they’d just had sex—was when he was undercover. So his senses were on automatic alert, keeping him from anything but the most cursory of rest.
Last night, he’d dropped the bullshit excuses.
He’d lain here on this very bed, staring up at the bunk above him, aching to touch Marni. To taste her. To feel her in his arms again.
He wanted her like crazy.
And then she moved.
Just a little.
So little, his brain argued that she might have only been breathing.
His dick argued right back that she’d just tossed aside the no and opened the door to yes.
Hunter hesitated.
And she moved again.
This time, with the sweet pressure of her butt against his erection, there was no mistaking her intention.
“Oh, yeah,” he murmured, sliding the silky swathe of her hair aside so he could plant his lips on her delicate throat. He breathed in the soft floral scent of her hair and groaned. “Oh, yeah, baby.”
His mouth moved over her skin, sliding, kissing, caressing. One hand was anchored between their bodies, but the other was free to roam. And roam it did. Up the rounded curve of her hip, down the gentle slope of her waist and along the glorious weight of her breast. He cupped the weight, loving how her breath shuddered and her breath quickened.
Needing to make sure this was a genuine yes, not something she could dismiss later with a half-assed I-was-asleep excuse, he swiftly shifted positions. So Marni was flat on her back, staring up at him, those big blue eyes rounded with shock and blurred with passion.
She was gorgeous.
Pale pink washed her skin, making it glow. Those cupid’s bow lips were open, whether in shock or invitation, he didn’t care. He took them anyway.
His gaze not releasing hers, he kept the kiss soft. Easy. Uncomplicated.
The way he usually liked his relationships.
The complete opposite of this.
Because as soft as she was, there was nothing easy or uncomplicated about Marni.
Her eyes didn’t shift, didn’t try to slide away. Instead, they challenged. They tempted. They dared him to take it further, to show her what he could do.
Hunter had never refused a dare in his life. But he’d never been as excited about meeting one as he was in this second.
His hands anchored on either side of her head, he took the kiss deeper. His tongue slid along her bottom lip, then traced the edge of her teeth. Passion flared in her eyes, but she didn’t blink.
Instead, her tongue, delicate and cool, met his. Just the tip, as if she was testing the taste of him. Her breath was a soft, fluttering inhalation. Then she moaned.
Oh, yeah, baby.
She liked what she was tasting.
His tongue dove deep, pulling hers into an intense dance. Swirling, tangling, thrusting against each other. Hunter shifted, so his body weight was angled between his hip and one shoulder, so his hand was free to roam. And roam it did. His fingers skimmed, light and teasing, over her shoulder and down her chest. His palm hovered over her breast, then slid across the soft cotton fabric covering her stomach and down to her low belly where her shirt was tucked into another one of those sexy, hip-skimming, knee-hugging skirts. He didn’t dip lower. Just skimmed. Teased. Reveled in the soft give of her body beneath his hand.
She had the most incredible body.
Welcoming, warm, gloriously feminine.
He wanted more. Needed more. Had been driving himself crazy wondering what more would be like.
Now he was going to find out.
Excitement surged, adding an urgency to Hunter’s hunger.
His mouth delved deeper. He
reveled in Marni’s sweet, rich flavor, his fingers working their way back up her body button by button, freeing each from the fabric and revealing silky soft skin. When he reached her chest and that last button, he couldn’t resist. He pulled his mouth from hers to look at the bounty he’d just uncovered.
Like Aphrodite rising from the foam, her breast was encased in frothy lace the color of the inside of a seashell. Lush and rounded, he could see the raspberry tip through the shimmery fabric. His finger traced, light as air, around that tip.
Marni gasped.
He ran his thumb across the pebbling flesh. Once, twice, then pinched.
Marni moaned.
His finger slid between the pale pink lace and her even paler skin, her nipple hardening to a gratifying peak beneath his knuckle.
Marni’s fingers dug into him, one hand on the waistband of his jeans, the other gripping his shoulder as if deciding whether to pull him over her or shove him down so she could straddle his body.
Either position was fine with him.
Figuring he should help her decide, he gently tugged the lace down, revealing one gorgeous breast. He closed his eyes for a second, so blown away at her perfection, then opened them again because, well, he just couldn’t resist.
He took that raspberry-red, pouting tip between his lips, twirling his tongue around the sensitive flesh. Her cry of pleasure was almost lost in a pounding sound from somewhere behind them.
Hunter’s body tensed, but he didn’t stop.
The only threat he could sense was to the end of their pleasure. And he wasn’t ready for that to happen.
Marni gasped, though, making as if to pull away.
“Ignore it,” he advised against her nipple. To emphasize his point, he nipped at the bud with a gentle scrape of his teeth. Her body arched, shuddering as she pressed her breast closer to his mouth. Hunter sucked, hard, reveling in the taste, the texture, the deliciousness of her.
The knock came again.
Marni’s body tensed. He could actually feel her desire seeping away, like a faucet shutting down.
If Hunter’s mouth hadn’t been full, he’d have clenched his teeth. Ignore, ignore, ignore, he mentally chanted. But he didn’t say a word. This, like their sleeping arrangements, was her decision.
“You should get that,” she finally breathed.
Hunter pulled away to stare at her, biting back the barrage of cusswords. Her eyes were blurry with passion, but her jaw was set. Hunter wanted to argue. He damned near wanted to beg. Instead, like the gentleman he hated himself for being at that moment, he ripped his body off hers and stormed across the room.
“What?” he snarled as he yanked the door open.
“Your, um, outfits for tonight,” the porter stammered, his eyes flashing fear. “My instructions were to provide costuming for the big event, that you’d take part in the mystery skit tonight.”
“Whose damned instructions are those?”
The kid, his hand trembling, shoved the hangers at Hunter, then started flipping through papers so fast, he tore a couple.
“Mr. Murray indicated when he booked the room that you’d take one of the roles this evening. We assumed—” The kid stopped to gulp so hard, his Adam’s apple almost bounced. “We figured that meant both people in the room. You can skip it, though. I mean, I’ll make—get someone else to take the parts. You don’t have to do it.”
Hunter had scared plenty of grown men in his day. But he’d never felt like this kind of jerk.
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what was going on,” he apologized. When the kid tried to take the hangers back, he shifted them, then dug into his still painfully tight jeans to find some cash. “Here, thanks.”
“The, um, the instructions are pinned to the costumes.”
“Okay.” Hunter started to shut the door.
“The dinner dance starts in an hour.”
“Right.” Hunter glared.
The porter swallowed again, then turned heel and scurried away.
Dinner dance. In costumes.
Murray was definitely getting his revenge for Hunter pissing him off.
Shutting the door, Hunter took his time turning around to face the bed and its delightful occupant. He wasn’t sure what he’d see on her face, but he was betting it wasn’t going to be an invitation to finish what they’d started.
He tossed the costumes, hangers and all, over the back of a chair, then met Marni’s eyes.
She looked like she’d been well loved.
Her hair tumbled in a tangled mass of curls over her shoulders. Her eyes were heavy with passion, makeup smudged and lips swollen. She’d tugged her clothes into place and now sat, prim as a schoolgirl, on the edge of the bed. Her feet were still bare, though. Hunter wanted to kneel between her thighs and lift one foot, cover her toes with hot kisses, then work his way up her leg.
“So?” He waited.
She swallowed hard, then lifted her chin. “So that was fun.”
“Fun?”
Hunter couldn’t help it. He laughed.
“Let me get this straight. You broke the rule by coming into the cabin during off-limit hours.” While he had unsecured top secret material out in the open, no less.
“You climbed into my bed. Rubbed your sweet ass against me until I had a hard-on to rival a railroad spike. You drove me to the brink of what had promised to be the most incredible orgasm of my life. And then you forced me to answer the door.”
He gave her an are-you-freaking-kidding-me stare.
Unfazed by his rant, Marni batted her eyelashes right back.
“What? And that isn’t fun for you?”
8
IT TOOK EVERY OUNCE of her will to keep the glib smile in place as Marni waited to see what Hunter would do. Heck, she still wasn’t sure what she was doing.
Fun?
She had no idea why that’d popped out of her mouth. Her only defense was that her brain didn’t function well on sexual overload.
Heck, one second, she’d been floating on a sea of incredible pleasure. The next, she’d been pounded back to earth. And not in the fun, sexual way she’d have enjoyed.
Her body felt as though it was going to splinter into tiny little pieces. Nerves wrapped around desire, tangling with excitement and overlaid by fear.
And Hunter just stood there, staring.
Unable to hold his gaze, she shifted her attention to the fancy clothes he’d tossed over the back of the chair.
Vividly aware that she was barefoot, as if the sight of her naked toes was the ultimate tease, she rubbed one arch against the other. Hunter’s eyes shifted to her feet. Narrowed. Heated.
Marni gulped.
She jumped up from the bed, crossing to the outfit and lifting the dress as if it were suddenly the most fascinating thing on earth.
All of her attention was focused on the man behind her.
She waited for Hunter to do something. To say anything.
But he didn’t.
He just leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, and stared. She could feel his eyes on her back, like hot lasers equipped with tiny sexual fingers that teased and tempted everywhere they touched.
Her breath only a little labored, Marni pretended she didn’t notice. Laying the dress back on the chair, she crossed to the tiny bathroom to get her brush, running it through her pillow-tangled hair. Then, realizing that this would just remind both of them why her hair had been getting tangled on the pillow, she tossed it on the table.
She looked around the room, her eyes flitting from this to that, landing everywhere but on him.
His briefcase and laptop were once again locked away.
The green landscape flew past the window like a blurred watercolor.
The bed—where just a few minutes ago he’d been inviting her to enjoy what was promising to be a pretty sweet orgasm—was mussed, with the duvet kicked to the bottom of the mattress.
Her pulse jumped ahead a few beats.
She
wanted that orgasm.
She wanted it so badly, she was afraid she’d do something stupid. Something crazy. Something she’d regret, maybe not in the morning, but within a couple of days. Because she figured that was probably about how long it’d take to return from climactic pleasure la-la land.
“Are you attending the party tonight?” she asked, tossing random words out to try to defuse the tension. “It’s the big event, where everyone gets to toss out their suspicions and make accusations. I think it was Peter. He had means, opportunity and motive. What do you think?”
“I’m not interested in games.”
Well. Marni pressed her lips together. She was a smart girl. She didn’t need an interpreter or a big flashing neon sign to pick up on the double entendre.
Her fingers dug into her palms as she stared at the dress. She wasn’t trying to play a game. But she didn’t know what she wanted, either. Well, that was a lie. She wanted him. But should she give in to that desire? What was going to happen if she did?
Was she strong enough to separate her physical needs and her emotional hopes? Was she smart enough to keep from hoping for something that she knew was impossible? Something guaranteed to demand more than she could give if she was going to achieve her career ambitions?
Finally, shoring up all her nerve, she looked at Hunter.
He didn’t look pissed.
Or impatient, or irritated, or any other negative thing that she’d imagine most guys would feel after finding a willing woman in his bed—twice—only to be denied. And maybe he did feel all of those things, but he was too much a gentleman to show it.
That scored a lot of points in her book.
That, and the memory of his lips on her breast.
She sucked in a deep breath, pulling her gaze away again to finger the beaded fabric of the evening gown.
“So?”
“So?” she tossed back, still staring at the dress.
“So are you going to play dress-up?”
Marni tilted her head, taking in the entire gown. It was one of the prettiest she’d ever seen. The kind that made a girl want to play dress up, to put on her highest heels and fanciest jewelry. To pretend she was a princess.
A fair maiden.
The most desirable woman in the room.