by Lora Leigh
Returning to the bedroom, she moved to her dresser, removed her jewelry, and placed it in a small engraved silver box. She was quiet, her expression clear. But he could feel the tension emanating from inside her. Like a string wound too tight and humming.
“You should have let me know about the lunch,” he stated as he leaned against the wall and simply watched her. “We’re supposed to be working together here.”
Her head lifted, and their gazes met in the mirror. “Like you invited me to the meeting you had with the rest of your team this morning?” she asked.
John hid his surprise. How the hell had she known he’d had a meeting with the team?
Bailey’s lips quirked into a sardonic smile. “Don’t expect concessions that I’m not given as well,” she told him coolly. “I can be a hell of a team player if the team I’m on actually understands working together.”
His jaw tightened at the statement. “You’ll be a team player on this one regardless,” he informed her. “You’re going to have to accept that the team surrounding you will remain invisible, Bailey. It’s the only way to do this. Don’t make things harder than they have to be.”
“Simply accept that I’m no more than an asset in this little game then?” she asked haughtily as she turned around, her movements slow and deliberate. “Do you really think it’s going to be that easy, John?”
No, he didn’t. He knew she was going to make it harder than hell for him to keep her away from the unit. That was the deal. She couldn’t be a part of the team as a whole; if she was, then she became a liability when it was over.
“It’s going to be that easy,” he said calmly. “We both get what we want this way. That should be enough for you.”
Her lips thinned in irritation as her arms crossed over her breasts and she glared at him from the other side of the room.
“So I’m to have no idea who’s friend or foe,” she stated tightly. “I’m to just follow your lead and be a good little girl when you need to take me out to convince the bad guys that you’re just as bad as they are?”
He stared back at her, mocking. “That would be classed in ‘only in my dreams,’ right?”
“Pretty much,” she retorted with false sweetness. “But even your fantasies couldn’t be that good, John. I think you’re smart enough that your sense of reality would intrude right into that little dream should it strike your mind.”
The sarcasm in her tone sent his blood pressure spiking into pure unadulterated lust. Damn her, she knew the buttons to push every time. She could spike his dick harder, faster, than any woman he had ever met with a simple arch of her brow and the gleam of challenge in those emerald eyes of hers.
And she knew it. He watched as her gaze flickered down his body before jerking back to his. Staring back at her knowingly, he watched the flush that mounted her cheeks and knew she was well aware of exactly what she was doing to him.
“That is not an acceptable response to an argument,” she informed him.
John grunted at that. “Since when does it have to be acceptable? And you’re changing the subject. We need to come to an understanding here and now, sweetheart. No more meetings, lunches, dinners, or conversations if you don’t invite me into your little loop.”
“Like I’m invited into yours?” She rolled her eyes. “We’re not a team until the rules go both ways, John. If you can disappear to one of your little meetings, then I guess you’re just going to have to trust me when I disappear into one of mine.”
Enough was enough. She was daring him deliberately, challenging him in an area where she knew he couldn’t back down and give her what she wanted. It wasn’t possible. He wasn’t working within an acceptable arena where the unit was concerned, and need to know meant people could die if they pushed and learned more than they needed to.
He was across the room before she could avoid him, pulling her to him, holding her to him. There were a lot of things a man could learn about a woman when he pulled her into his embrace. Especially a woman as willful as he knew Bailey could be. A woman as well trained.
She could have jerked away from him easily. She could have had him on the floor in a breath, groaning in pain. But the wide streak of femininity inside her, the arousal, the hunger he could see in her eyes pushed back the stubbornness. He could feel it in the subtle molding of her body against his, the way her hips melted against him, the way her lips softened beneath his.
The way she went wild.
John nipped at the lips that opened hungrily against his. His tongue licked against hers, twined against it. Lust, need, something dark, something too hot, too intense twisted inside him until he felt as though the sexual intensity were burning him alive from the inside out.
It had always been this way with her. From that first kiss in Australia to this moment, the arousal flared white-hot and intense, digging into his senses and tightening his balls until he wondered if he could stand the strain.
His hold loosened as he felt her clawing at the clothes he wore. She pulled at the shirt, jerking it up along his back until he pulled away, intending to unbutton it and shrug it from his shoulders.
She didn’t give him time to unbutton. Running her hands to his chest, she gripped the edge of the material and jerked. Buttons scattered across the floor as his chest was revealed. The cool air of the room didn’t have a chance against his heated flesh.
Dominance rose inside him, tightening his muscles and sending a surge of adrenaline tearing through his body. He jerked her back to him, because he had to feel her close to him. He needed more of her.
Gripping the hem of her shirt, he pulled back enough to rip it from her as she lifted her arms with sensuous grace, wrapping them around his neck and tugging him back to her for another of those heated, hungry kisses.
Damn her, she made him ready to howl with lust. It grew inside him with every stroke of his hands along her body, overtook him with each article of clothing that he nearly tore from her flesh.
Minutes later she was naked against him, her breasts branding into the naked flesh of his chest as he bore her to the bed. Nothing mattered but Bailey. Nothing mattered but touching her, tasting her.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, her lips opened to his. But it wasn’t submission she gave him. It wasn’t supplication. It was a woman demanding the man she needed, the man she loved. A woman who had lost too much far too long ago.
Standing on her tiptoes, for one precious second she commanded the kiss. Her lips parted, her tongue stroked over his, dueled for domination until with a harsh groan he took control. One hand threaded through her head, cupped the back of her skull, and held her still beneath his kiss. The other gripped her hip, held her in place, and guided the kiss.
For a moment.
Bailey wanted to laugh in joy as she felt his surprise when she nipped at his lips, stroked over them with her tongue, and refused to be dominated. Her fingers tugged at his hair as her nipples raked over his chest.
It was a passion unlike anything she had ever known, even with Trent that first night, so very long ago. It was a lust, an overwhelming hunger that she couldn’t fight. With each taste of him, with each touch of his callused hands she needed more, she ached for more until she could barely breathe for the ferocity of it.
Shudders of pleasure were racing beneath her flesh as his free hand began to caress her, moving up her back, over her waist, and up her side to cup her breast, his thumb stroking over an engorged nipple.
Bailey wasn’t to be outdone. Her hands lowered from his hair. She wasn’t doing very well at holding him to her anyway. He was doing as he pleased, sipping and nibbling at her lips, destroying her control with each deep, tongue-thrusting kiss.
It was like being submerged in pure ecstasy. She let herself become lost in him, this time, in ways she hadn’t allowed that first tentative night. The night she had thought she had lost him forever.
Tonight, she would take everything she could get from him. Tonight she would give him everything she
had to give.
Her hands stroked from his shoulders, over his chest, to his hard abs. The feel of his hard muscles overlain with tough, sun-darkened flesh was like a narcotic to her senses. It infused the passion roiling through her and built the need for more higher, hotter inside her.
She could feel the heat of that need, that hunger as it spread from her sex, dampening the folds of flesh as it sensitized them.
Her clit ached. The swollen bundle of nerves felt too tight, too hot. The need for relief was like a biting inferno she couldn’t seem to assuage.
“Sweet love,” John groaned, that little bit of accent breathing against her ear and sending shivers racing down her back. “How I love your touch.”
His lips raked down her neck, his teeth nipped at flesh so sensitive that each caress brought her to her tiptoes and had a hoarse cry tearing from her throat.
She needed him. Needed him until she wondered if she could survive it. Needed him until it was like a conflagration burning through her body.
One hand slid lower, her fingers searching for and finding the heated length of his cock as it pressed high against her belly. Thick and iron-hard, throbbing beneath her touch, the silken flesh was like a flame in her hands.
“Damn.” He breathed hard against her ear as her fingers stroked along the shaft. “Sweet mercy, love, you’ll have me coming in your hand if you keep this up.”
She nearly came in his arms at the rough statement whispered against the sensitive flesh of her neck.
“Then you’ll just have to try to do it right the second time,” she panted, a smile tugging at her lips as his chuckle echoed against her flesh.
“Think I’d get it right the second time?” His hand moved from her waist then, curled against her hip, then pushed between their bodies to find the flesh beyond.
“Oh God.” Her head fell back, her hips arched against his touch as his fingers slid into the narrow slit and rubbed delicately against her clit. “I think we’d try the third time just to be sure.”
“Practice makes perfect?”
She would have answered him. She would have come up with half a dozen smart-assed remarks if he hadn’t chosen that moment to press his finger into the tight, clenched entrance of her pussy.
“John.” His name was a cry of demand as her thighs parted farther and she felt her juices easing along his finger, lubricating her more, increasing the pleasure tearing through her.
It was wild, the way the sensation thundered through her, throbbed in every beat of her heart, and kept her on a ragged edge of desperate hunger.
She needed his touch now, soaked it in with a desperation born of the reality of loss and being found again. It was wrapped in joy, speared with pain, and through it all was a hunger she had never forgotten. A hunger she couldn’t eradicate from her soul.
“Touch me,” she whispered, the need pouring through her, ripping at her. “Oh God, John. Touch me.”
Though how he could touch her more, deeper, or better than he was, she had no clue.
Then he did. His lips nudged against hers, rubbed against them, then opened them in a kiss so deep, so filled with wicked sensual hunger that it seemed to explode inside her.
She was on the verge of begging. The fingers of one hand stroked at the long, thick length of his cock as her hips writhed against the finger plunging inside her. First one, then a second, filling her, stroking inside her and caressing flesh rioting with such extreme sensation that she was shaking with near rapture.
The pad of his palm pressed against her clit, sending lightning bolts of fiery pleasure to tear through her nervous system.
She felt poised within the heart of a flame. Her vagina clenched around his fingers, fluttered against the rapid strokes that filled her, stretched her.
Five years was a hell of a long time to survive without touch, without affection. To exist within a void that was filled with nothing more than a memory.
She relished each touch now and reached for more. Her fingers stroked the hardened length of his cock, weighed the heavy sac beneath, and caressed him as she never had before.
“Baby, you’re destroying me,” he groaned.
She didn’t care. He’d already destroyed her.
“Don’t stop!” Her cry was a broken plea as his fingers slid from the aching center of her body.
“Just for a bit, darlin’,” he swore, his voice rough.
A second later she was in his arms, a step later and they were in her bed.
Rising to her knees, she met him as he came to her. Her arms wrapped around his neck as her lips met his. Lips and tongues battled, dueled as he pushed her back to the mattress. Pulling her thighs apart, he slid effortlessly between them, tore his lips from hers, and let them roam her body.
“Not like this.” She pushed against his shoulders, fought for supremacy.
His laughter was like a balm to the ragged edges of pain inside her. There was joy in the sound, playfulness. There was a willingness to tease, to tempt, not just to conquer.
Before she could process the sudden change in position he was on his back, his head moving between her spread thighs.
Bailey froze at the first stroke of his tongue through the swollen folds of her pussy. It flickered and probed, caressed and stroked, each lick light and easy, teasing and tempting as she braced her hands on his abs and fought to breathe.
Rising beneath her was the heavy length of his cock. The flushed, engorged crest throbbed, spilling a minute amount of pearly moisture that tempted her tongue.
She could barely think for the pleasure centered between her thighs. She could do nothing but feel, but ache for more.
Her head lowered, her hands wrapped around the base of the engorged shaft as instinct and hunger took over. Her tongue swiped over the head of the shaft, and Bailey began to give as good as she could get.
She filled her mouth with the heated width of the head of his cock, sucked it in, and laved it with her tongue.
John felt the first spear of sensation as her tongue swiped over his cock. Gripping her thighs and holding her to him, he speared his tongue inside the slick opening of her core, hoping to distract her. Hell, he should have remembered just how bold and adventurous Bailey could get.
But he’d never seen her adventurous in bed. That one night, a few fragile hours hadn’t been near enough to know what she could deliver, even as she received.
And God help him now, but his Bailey was sure as hell delivering. It was all he could do to keep his head together, to keep his senses intact enough to pleasure her as she pleasured him.
He ran his tongue through the wet folds of her pussy, tasting the sweet syrup of desire, feeling the heat and need in every clench of tender tissue as he pushed his tongue inside her.
The taste of her intoxicated him, the touch of her, her touching him, him touching her—it was like a high no drug could deliver, no amount of alcohol could provide.
He flicked his tongue over her clit and fought to control his spinning senses as her mouth worked over the head of his cock. She was sucking at him with sensual delight, each caress of her mouth a testament to the pleasure he was giving her as well.
Her fingers were caressing the base, then his balls. She weighed the heavy sac, then moaned around the thick crest as he licked inside her once again.
Sweet Lord, she was making him insane. His hips arched involuntarily, giving her more, filling her mouth until she was forced to draw back just a bit.
John could feel the sweat gathering along his body. The heat building inside him as he fought to hold back his release. He wanted to explode deep inside her. He wanted to feel her sweet pussy clenching around him, drawing him in, holding him inside her delicate little body.
He hadn’t realized how he’d missed her. Her touch, her kiss, all the sweet little tidbits that made up the woman. The way her hands stroked over his flesh, as though the touch of him was all that mattered to her.
As though touching her was all that mattered to him.
His hands stroked over her thighs, her rear. He let his nails rasp against her flesh and felt the betraying little shiver of need it invoked as she moaned around the cock filling her mouth.
Each deep draw of her sweet lips, the suckling against the erect head was like shards of ecstasy raking through his cock. Blistering heat wrapped around him until John felt his body was close to exploding, disintegrating into fragments from the pleasure of her touch.
Cupping his hands over the curves of her rear, he brought her closer, licked around her swollen clit, sucked it into his mouth.
Distracting her from the deep, destructive suckling of his cock was becoming a priority. He was going to come in her mouth, and that he didn’t want. Not yet. Not this time.
Drawing the swollen bud against his tongue, he licked against it, rubbed it, felt it pulse and throb against him as she began to stiffen, her body tensing with the sensations clamoring through her.
Moving one hand lower, his fingers found the delicate little opening to her pussy. Sliding in slow and easy, John worked two fingers into the clenched tissue, feeling it flutter against him as her orgasm began to build inside her.
But that wicked mouth didn’t stop, didn’t pause. Her tongue swirled around the head of his cock, her moans vibrated against it.
He pressed his fingers deeper inside her, moving them slow and easy in thrusts calculated to destroy her control as he sucked at the hardened bud of her clit and felt her flying higher.
And still she relished the flesh she had in her mouth. She sucked at him until he felt as though his soul were being drawn from his body. She licked, her fingers stroked.
Their breathing was rasps of desperation in the stillness of the room, their moans filled with tortured pleasure.
John felt his heels digging into the mattress as he fought back his release. The muscles of her thighs were tight, her body vibrating with tension.
“Enough.” He moved quickly, lifting her from him and pushing her to her back. He jerked up the condom he had tossed to the upper corner of the bed and rolled it over his cock before he came over her.
“Like hell.” She moved before he could push between her thighs.