“It’s a jade dragon, man,” Judah explained. “For courage and protection. In your quest.”
Cooper picked up the pendant and looked at it. “My quest. I kind of like that.”
“Good.” Judah put a hand on Cooper’s shoulder and squeezed it. “I want you to get down off this mountain, go back to the big city and get your woman. No more waiting. Because if I have one piece of advice for you younglings, it’s this. Life is short and there could be a yeti out there in the forest, right now, ready to make people kebabs of all of us and roast us on our own fire. You feel me?”
“I feel you,” Cooper said solemnly.
“And I’ve lived a long time and done a lot of things,” Judah continued. “Hell, I’ve done everything you can think of, and then invented some new shit that the FDA hasn’t approved yet.”
They all tittered, easing the tension.
“And the regrets I have—and I don’t believe in regrets, so I only have one or two, but they’re real doozies, believe me—don’t have to do with the shit I did. They have to do with the shit I didn’t do. The shit where I let fear tie me up in so many knots that I sat on my hands and let the opportunity pass. Let the special woman go even when I ate, drank, breathed and slept her.” At this point, Judah bent at the waist and got right in Cooper’s face. “And now, I have to live with the fact that when I’m on my deathbed—and let’s be real here, given the mileage on my liver and my ticker, I’ve probably only got ten good minutes left—I will see her face and I will feel that pain here.” Judah thumped his fist against his heart. “And that’s a bitch, my brother. You know?”
“Yeah.” Cooper dropped his gaze and nodded. “I know. I know.”
Judah nodded with unmistakable satisfaction. “So what’re you going to do?”
Cooper’s determined gaze shot back up to Judah. “I’m going to climb down from this mountain and go get my woman.”
“Woo-hoo!” Judah stretched his arms to the sky and leaned way back, howling as though he was the love child of a rock-and-roll god and a werewolf. Summer, predictably, joined in, making it sound like the genesis of a pack of wolves. “Woo-hoo!”
He yanked Cooper to his feet and pulled him into a bear hug, but Marcus hardly noticed.
His attention was riveted to the left side of the circle, and Claudia, whose steady gaze was locked with his. Maybe it was his overactive imagination, but he felt a flaming heat from her more strongly than from the bonfire.
And he decided, right then, that he, too, was going to climb down off this mountain and get his woman.
Chapter 12
As soon as they banked the bonfire, trekked back down to the house and retired to their various suites, Marcus hit the enormous Italian-tile shower and made the water as steamy hot as he could take it. Lathering up with the sporty-smelling body wash that Judah kept in convenient dispensers, he ran over his plan.
He’d taken care to notice which wing and room were Claudia’s when they all climbed the stairs and said their good-nights, so he knew right where to go. He’d knock on her door, plead sleeplessness, which was certainly true, and ask if she wanted to join him for a drink in front of the fire downstairs. Once there, he’d make his case again, emphasizing that he didn’t want to rush or pressure her in any way, but that he really...he really...
Ah, shit, he thought, flattening his palms against the tiles and leaning into the spray as he rinsed off his head. This was the problem. What, exactly, did he think he’d say to her? How was he supposed to explain the way he was coming to feel about her—the passion, the protectiveness, the overwhelming desire to be near her, no matter where she was or what she was doing—when he didn’t begin to understand it himself?
Hell, maybe he should go see if Judah had a courage necklace for him, as well. It sure looked as though he was going to need it—
A whoosh of cool air hit his butt, snapping him out of his head and back into reality.
And then a pair of silky arms twined their way around his torso just as a very naked female body pressed up against him from behind and a pair of nipples—hot little engorged points that excited him enough to trap his breath in his throat—rubbed against his back.
Frozen with sudden, sharp desire, he clung on to the arms, circled his hips and leaned back, moaning, as the woman gave him a long, slow lick between the shoulder blades.
The lick ended with a nip that had him unraveling like a seventh grader experiencing his first French kiss. He decided it was time to inject just a hint of caution into the proceedings.
Turning his head and blinking the streaming water from his eyes, he caught the roaming hands before they dipped below his waist, to the part of him that was dying to be inside of her.
“This damn well better not be Summer,” he warned.
Claudia’s husky laugh against his sensitized skin unwound him a little bit more, sliding under his flesh and into his blood.
“Now that we’ve both been awarded the auction I have an important question for you.”
“And what’s that?” he asked, holding his breath and hating her, just a little, for the power she had over him and the way she wielded it.
“Do you need any help with your back?”
Wrong question.
He stiffened.
Correction: the rest of his body stiffened.
Jerking out of her arms but keeping a grip on her hands, he pivoted to face her. The wariness in her wide eyes mollified him somewhat, and he tried to focus on that rather than on her lush body, which was more than enough to send him spiraling out of control.
“What’s wrong?” she asked with dread. But he was so absorbed with staring at her—seeing her standing there in all her glory in front of him with nothing between them—that her voice barely registered.
Ah, man.
Her caramel skin was slick with water and flushed from the steam. Rivulets trickled down her neck and trailed through the path between her breasts, making the perfect trail for his tongue to follow. Her breasts were perfect rosy ovals that would fill his hands and give him the ideal place to rub his face, like a lion marking his territory and claiming it with his touch. Her waist was narrow, her belly gently rounded, her hips perfect, sloping curves and her sex bare and so plump with engorgement that he was pretty sure one stroke of his fingers would set her off.
“Marcus.”
The sweet, murmuring way she said his name wound him up tighter, and, impossibly, he hardened even more for her. Wanted her more. Needed her more.
His pissed-off gaze shot to hers and held.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again, looking vulnerable and confused.
See? he thought, turning her loose and scrubbing his hands over his head. This was the thing. She absolutely did not get that she tied him up in knots. She didn’t understand that he was at a tipping point, ready to fall in love with her if she met him even a quarter of the way and let him know that it might be safe. She couldn’t fathom that this went way beyond his desire for her body.
“Wow,” he said. “You’re the queen of the head game, aren’t you?”
Her delicate brows came together. “Pardon me?”
As for that cool English accent? It cranked him higher, making him want nothing more than to rattle her the way she’d rattled him.
But he was tongue-tied, because if he told her he was falling in love with her, already, the odds were that he’d never see her again.
He ran a hand over his wet face, trying to hold back both the water and his rising frustration.
“I mean, you’re all over the place, aren’t you, Claudia? We’re on, but, hey, no, on second hand, we’re not on.” He tried to keep at least some of the anger out of his voice, but it was a losing battle. “That’s you, isn’t it, Claudia? ‘Well, yeah, sure, I want you, Marcus, but don’t count on me to be here for long
, ’cause I’ll disappear on you the first chance I get. I don’t trust men, so, hey, you’ll never get out from behind the eight ball with me, buddy, but you can screw me if you want. I’m fine with that.’”
Her face twisted with outrage. “I’m not that much of a bloody head case, thank you very much! And if you suddenly don’t want me, then all you have to do is say so—”
“Want you?” His strangled voice pitched higher, ricocheting off the tiles like a bounced ball. “Want you? I want you, Claudia,” he told her, each word feeling as though it was being ripped straight from his knotted gut. “I. Want. You. I’m not after you to scratch an itch, and if you came in here thinking you were going to scratch mine and be done with me except for the auction, then forget it. I don’t need any help with my back, thanks.”
“Brilliant!” she snapped, sweeping her wet hair out of her face and snatching a towel off the rack. “And you think I’m the one with the problem! Well, sir, I don’t know what you think you’re after with me, but I’m leav—”
He snorted. “Yeah, I know, you’re leaving. What a surprise. Claudia’s taking the escape hatch with me. Again. She’s hitting the ejector seat, which is so much safer than sticking around and discovering that I’m actually one of those mythical good guys she’s probably heard about. Well, great. Bye.”
He held the shower door open for her.
Her jaw dropped. “You’re kicking me out?”
“You said you were leaving. So go ahead. Leave.”
She stared up, into his face, and it killed him to see every emotion in the book weave its way in and out of her expression: doubt, fear and, worst of all, something that looked like an unwilling sort of hope.
He almost caved. It would’ve been so much easier to take what she was offering tonight and worry about building a strong and permanent relationship with her in the morning, after several hours of uninhibited lovemaking.
But this was too important. Claudia was too important. And the most important thing he could do at this crucial moment was to start out on the right foot with her.
So he waited, holding the door and letting her decide for herself.
After the longest several seconds of his life, she slowly reached out, dropped the towel on the floor and, covering his hand with hers, pulled the shower door shut again.
The wild swoop of relief he felt was so overwhelming, he lost his head a little. With an indistinct noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a choked sob, he took her cheeks between his palms and leaned his forehead against hers so they were face-to-face.
“You’re making me very happy,” he whispered to her. “You know that, don’t you?”
She managed a shaky laugh. “I hope so. Because I’m almost as happy as I am scared.”
“Don’t be scared of this.” He kissed her then, a light and, he hoped, reassuring brush of his lips against the tender curves of hers. “Why are you scared? Tell me.”
“Well, the thing is,” she said, tipping her face up to his and blinking the spray out of her eyes, “the idea of walking out on you is scarier than the idea of trying a relationship with you. And that, naturally—”
“Scares you,” he finished for her.
“Precisely.”
They laughed and kissed, easing into each other with equal enthusiasm. There were so many ways to kiss her...to lick the water from her lips...to taste the water inside her mouth and kiss her again, harder, deeper...to nip that lush bottom lip and make her cry out with aroused surprise...that he wondered if he could possibly discover them all when he had only this one lifetime to give her. He ran his hands down her water-slicked back and, cupping the taut semicircles of her truly world-class butt, ground his hips against hers. The bare-skinned contact between them was so deliciously raw that he had to break the kiss and savor it, panting into her mouth and absorbing her mewls into his.
“Why did you change your mind?” He knew he was pushing his luck by demanding answers like this, and he also knew it was a stupid move. When you hit twenty-one in Vegas and won a hundred large, you didn’t tell the dealer to hold up a minute and ask him why he didn’t award the money to the poor sap on your left. But, again, it was important, and he needed to get everything about this first time with Claudia exactly right. “Why are you really staying?”
“Because I’m—” she began, then stopped herself just as his heart rate kicked into turbo-overdrive. Her face was glowing with a light he couldn’t believe he’d had anything to do with. He waited, not daring to breathe, willing the end of the sentence to be falling in love with you, but she’d caught herself just in time, and the words were now on lockdown. Or maybe he’d only manufactured what he so desperately needed to hear. “I... I’m tired of letting my fear run my life. I’m tired of my father controlling me when he’s never even met me. Why have I given him all this power over me?” She laughed, shrugging. “He doesn’t deserve it, does he?”
“Hell, no.”
“So I think I’ll try things my way for a while. See how they turn out.”
“That works for me.” Stealing another deep kiss and savoring the way she ran her hands up his back and around his neck, he trailed his fingertips down her torso, from her exposed armpits, past the delicate and sensitive sides of her breasts—which made her shiver involuntarily, so he made a mental bookmark—and down to her butt again. Scooping up the two halves of her ass, he boosted her until she was in his arms, with her legs wrapped around his waist in an unyielding grip that sent his level of self-control plummeting toward zero. “And how’re things turning out so far?”
She stared, unblinking, straight into his eyes, and that was the moment—the very nanosecond—that he realized Claudia owned his heart and probably had since the second he’d laid eyes on her. There was no I think I might be about it. He wasn’t falling. He was in love. And this woman, right here in his arms, was his world and his entire future, and she didn’t even know it, and he didn’t dare tell her. Yet.
But the moment would come.
“How’re things turning out so far?” she echoed softly, licking, and then biting, his lips. “Beautifully. And I suspect they’ll be perfect once you’re moving inside me.”
“Well, then,” he said, flinging a clumsy hand behind him to turn off the water and swinging her around and out of the shower. “Let’s find out.”
He walked as quickly as he could with his precious cargo, praying he didn’t stumble on the edge of a rug and fall, which would not be the kind of masculine power he wanted to project at this moment. But he made it to the bed with no problem and lowered her to the white flannel sheets, making sure that her head was on the pillow.
She clung to his arms, as though she wanted to make sure he didn’t escape as she stretched back and he levered over her. And then she laughed.
He tried to frown, but his heart was so joyously light that he couldn’t manage it. “Am I amusing you?”
“We’re soaking wet! We’re ruining the bed! We’re going to be cold later, aren’t we?”
As if he cared. Settling between her bent knees and open thighs, he zeroed in on her neck, which looked particularly tempting. Starting with the hollow between neck and shoulder, he gently scraped his teeth up the smooth column, grinning when she moaned and arched into him. He was even more delighted when she raised her hands overhead and laid herself out for him, telling him that she was receptive to his taking charge and comfortable enough with her own body and needs to accept the pleasure he was determined to give her.
He continued his downward descent until his face was exactly where he’d imagined it earlier, right between her swollen breasts, and he squeezed them together and rubbed his cheeks and lips all over her, kneading her flesh in his hands and reveling in her responsiveness...the sweet scent of her warm skin...the nipples that were hard and pointy with engorgement because she wanted him as much as he want
ed her.
“See, the thing is,” he told her, licking a nipple and enjoying the way it puckered and tightened down even further, “before I’m done with you? The bed’ll be wet with sweat anyway.”
“Ah, Marcus.” Gripping his head, she held him closer. “Don’t stop.”
He loved the throaty hitch in her voice, and the way her breasts heaved in his hands as she tried to catch her breath.
“And I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be getting cold tonight, no matter what happens with the sheets. Don’t you agree?”
With great effort, she raised her eyelids and stared at him with those spectacular gray eyes, which were now bright with passion. “Absolutely.”
“Good,” he said, getting a firm grip on her hips and sliding his tongue lower.
Realizing, too late, what he planned to do, she jackknifed at the waist. “Marcus, I don’t—”
He laughed and licked her, just there, and that one rough swipe was all it took. Stiffening, she came with a hoarse, spiraling cry that seemed to shock her as much as it pleased him. And then, because he wanted to wring every possible drop of ecstasy out of her, he rubbed her core, making endless slow circles with his index finger, and she clamped her thighs together around his hand even as she uncontrollably thrust her hips.
When he was sure she was finished, he kissed his way back up the length of her body, lingering again on her breasts, because they really were spectacular. Finally she’d had enough and recovered enough to speak. With a low growl, she grabbed his face and forced his head up so he could look at her, and though he couldn’t see his own face, he was pretty sure it was a hundred-percent-satisfied smirk.
She was deliciously flushed as she frowned at him, looking exactly like what she was—a woman who’d been well loved.
“What I was going to say, before I was so rudely interrupted—”
He laughed.
“—is that I really don’t want you to do that, because it’s been a long time for me, and I really want you to be inside me when— What’re you doing?”
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