by Cindy Gerard
She seemed to be having trouble breathing. And figuring out what to do with her hands. Her stiff fingers plucked at the spread beside her hips, then rose to tangle in his hair and press his mouth closer against her. She said his name on a desperate moan when he skimmed a hand down her tummy and cupped the heat still covered in damp black silk.
“Tell me what you want.” He lifted his head, then dipped to nuzzle her other breast.
“You. Inside me. Now.”
He managed a strangled laugh. “You’re really going to have to learn to express yourself.”
“And you’re really going to have to learn not to tease a desperate woman.”
Surprising him, she reared up. Pushing him to his back, she swung a leg over his hips and straddled him all in one fast, fierce and amazingly coordinated motion.
Triumphant in her conquest, she smiled down at him. “Not so funny now, huh?”
Well, yeah, it was. Funny and wonderful and sexy as hell. He couldn’t help it. He laughed again when she went to work on the buttons of his shirt then wrenched it off his shoulders and dragged it down his arms.
She was a wild, erotic dream bent over him. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, her breasts wet and free and pink where the stubble on his jaw had abraded her tender flesh. And she was all woman as she rose to stand on her knees, her fingers flying to unbuckle his belt, unfasten his pants and—
“Whoa.” He stilled her hands before she did some real damage. “Easy. We’ll both be happier if you take it easy.”
Her gaze locked on his, she drew a shaky breath, steadied herself. “You do it.” Her hands turned in his, covered them then guided them to his zipper. “Hurry.”
The urgency of her whispered command damn near sent him over the edge. So did the way she looked, her knees pressed into the mattress on either side of his thighs, her bare breasts rising and falling with each fractured breath, her lower lip caught, in anticipation, between her teeth.
He watched her face as he slowly lowered the zipper, lifted his hips and shoved his slacks and boxers to his knees.
Her eyes grew dark with desire as her gaze rose to his, then back to the rock-hard length of his erection.
And suddenly he didn’t feel like playing anymore. “Touch me.”
Nine
It felt as if she was having an out-of-body experience, Phoebe thought dreamily. Only she didn’t want to be out of her body. For one of the few times in her life, she wanted to be in it. She wanted him to be in it. The look on his face told her he wanted that, too, that he didn’t care if she was far from perfect. He didn’t care if her hips were a little too wide, if her breasts were a little too heavy and had never been described as perky. He thought she was beautiful.
What she was looking at was beautiful, too.
She sank back on her heels so she could see him better. The hard muscle of his thighs pressed against her bottom, the heat in his eyes sent liquid fire pooling in that part of her that so wanted to be part of him.
That such a man, such an intelligent, interesting and incredibly sexy man, could be this aroused by her seemed like a miracle.
He was the miracle. He was so…so…everything. Everything that a bookish, thirty-something librarian with the backbone of a snail had never thought, never dreamed, could be hers. Even if it was just for a night.
He talked about her adrenaline, but it was really his that had brought them to this point. Tomorrow, it would be important to remember that he was reacting to his anger at Jason and his concern for her. Tonight, she didn’t care what had landed him in her bed. What she cared about was his need. It made her strong, made her brave. It made her want him in ways that would embarrass her in the morning.
But not tonight. Tonight, she was a siren, wanton and uninhibited. Tonight, she was a temptress. Tonight, she was in his arms—and she was driving him crazy.
She slid her hands in a slow glide along his upper thighs, past his hip points, lingered over the concave of his belly, the delicious indentation of his navel. Oh, she knew where he wanted her to touch him, but she played it out, glancing her fingers over his taut nipples until he groaned, teasing her fingers through a mat of dark curls that so beautifully covered his chest.
Power. It was a heady thing this power she wielded. She could feel the stunning effects of it in the beat of his heart, fast and unsteady in his chest, see the heavy pulse of it thrumming through the thick artery at the base of his throat.
She lifted her gaze to his. He was watching her. His blue eyes were as dark as cobalt, dangerous even, as his broad chest rose and fell in shallow breaths that appeared to take all of his control to keep level.
He wet his lips, closed his eyes. “Please.”
It shouldn’t have been love that washed through her in a wave so strong it made her tremble. It shouldn’t have been love that was born of his one tortured and desperate whisper. But it was. It most definitely was.
Please.
Tears burned then blurred her vision. She’d been half in love with him since the first night she’d seen him. Her knight in shining armor. Her slayer of dragons. That this strong man would let himself be weak for her, that he would let himself beg for her broke down her last defense and sent her tumbling. Headlong. Happily. Into a love she’d been fighting since the first time she’d seen him.
Tomorrow, she would see the foolishness of it all. But tonight, oh, how she loved him tonight.
Eyes locked on his, she trailed her hands downward, splayed her fingers through the soft nest of curling hair that framed his sex, and then she touched him.
He jerked once, caught his breath.
She took him in her hand, reveled in his low groan of pleasure. He was forged heat and pulsing need, thick and heavy with arousal.
For her.
Beneath her, his muscles tensed, then gathered, and the next thing she knew she was flat on her back again and he was looming over her. The full measure of his weight stretched out over her, chest to breast; his erection nestled in the vee between her thighs as he kicked his pants and boxers to the floor.
His elbows dug into the mattress on either side of her shoulders, his forearms caged her head as his hands tangled in her hair and he crushed his mouth to hers.
She’d never felt so wanted. She’d never felt so much.
She opened her legs for him, wrapped them around his hips and locked her ankles. Heat, hunger, need. She felt them in every pore of her body as his tongue mated with hers and his hips pumped into hers in a hard, rocking rhythm.
He tore his mouth away, sucked in a ragged breath and swore. “Protection. Please.” He pressed his forehead to hers, his breath coming in hard, heavy gasps. “Please tell me you’ve got something.”
She was too far gone to think about whether this was a good thing or a bad thing that he didn’t carry condoms on the off chance he’d get lucky. And she was too needy to worry over what he would think about the fact that she had a full box of them in her nightstand drawer.
“Top drawer. Left. Hurry.”
He rolled off her and dragged open the drawer while she shimmied out of her panties. He was suited up and clench-jawed when he turned back to her. She held out her arms, opened her legs, and he found a place for himself between them.
“You deserve finesse,” he apologized as he reached between them. “I promise next time, I’ll make it up to you, but right now…”
She drew his mouth close to hers “Right now. I need you to shut up and—” She gasped as he hooked an arm behind her knee and pushed into her.
Gasped again when he withdrew, then drove into her again and again in a hard, fast, earth-moving, heart-pounding rhythm.
She’d barely caught her breath, hadn’t cataloged the unbelievable depth of the pleasure when a climax so electric, so sustained, so off-the-charts powerful screamed through her body. She flew over the top on a gasping sob, swept up in a flood of sensations so fierce they were almost frightening, so consuming she was lost to anything but the feel of him
moving inside her.
Somewhere in the midst of this current of mindless bliss, she heard him call her name, heard him swear her name, then groan her name as he thrust one final time and found his own shattering release.
When he could breathe again, when he could assimilate words into a cognitive stream of thought, when he could convince his muscles and his mind that he needed to roll off of her and give her some breathing room, Daniel still couldn’t make himself move.
He wanted to stay right where he was—buried inside of Phoebe Richards—for another millennium or two. By then maybe he’d have had enough of her.
He waited another several heartbeats, then reluctantly levered his weight up on his elbows. “Are you still with me in there?”
A small, dreamy smile tilted her lips. “Mmm.”
He pressed a kiss to one closed eyelid then the other. “I could move—”
“Shh.” One very limp hand lifted and with effort pressed an index finger against his lips. “No talking. Not yet.” She stretched sinuously beneath him, exhaled on a deep, satisfied sigh. “Just let me ride the wave until I’m sure it’s played out.”
He snagged her finger between his teeth. “And that was only the first wave. The seventh is the big one. Just think how long we can ride that one.”
Her eyes popped open. “Seventh?”
He grinned. “Hi.”
She caressed his jaw then raised her arms over her head and stretched again, long and lazy and catlike. “Hi back.”
He lowered his head, kissed her sweet, swollen mouth. “You okay?”
She pushed out a smug little laugh. “I’m perfect.”
“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “You are.”
When she smiled up at him another kind of wave—tenderness—washed over him. He thought, in that moment, that he could look at her face for hours. Listen to her sounds of pleasure for days. The thought of the sounds she would make when he loved her the way she deserved to be loved made him want to rectify that oversight as soon as humanly possible.
“Me, on the other hand,” he said, pulling out of her and easing up on an elbow so he could watch her face, “I get demerits for fast-forwarding to the end of the movie and missing all the good parts.”
“Good parts?” She let out another deep sigh. “Let’s see. Technicolor, fireworks, surroundsound, special effects. What other good parts could there possibly be?”
“Well.” He cupped her breast in his palm, loving the weight of her in his hand, the resiliency, the instant response as her nipple pearled. “Here’s a good part.”
He lowered his head, tasted. “A very good part.”
“Um. Oh.”
He slipped lower, pressing kisses to the underside of her breast, lingering over the adorable indentation of her navel that he couldn’t resist exploring with his tongue. “And yet another good part.”
She struggled to hike herself up on her elbows, her expression stunned and electric with anticipation as he slid to his knees on the floor at the foot of the bed. When he bracketed her hips in his palms and dragged her to the edge of the mattress, she stopped breathing.
“And here’s the best part of all.” He ran his tongue along the inside of her thigh, a slow glide from knee to just shy of that place he had yet to taste. Eyes locked on hers, he draped her legs over his shoulders. Then he lowered his head, nuzzled her damp curls, breathed in the scent of her and of him and of arousal.
“The very best part,” he murmured as his fingers opened her feminine folds and he finally tasted that wondrous place that defined her as a woman. It was sensual, swollen and so sensitive she came apart for him at that first intimate stroke.
“Daniel,” she gasped his name on a trembling sigh.
“Shh.” He gently bit the inside of a thigh, soothed her with a light brush of his fingertips over her belly.
And when the tremors had ebbed and her breathing had leveled, he loved her all over again. Slowly now, taking his time, drawing out her pleasure, heightening her need until she begged him for release then cried out in his arms when he gave it.
Silk, he thought after he’d turned off the light, maneuvered them under the covers and drawn her snug against his side. Her skin was like silk.
He lay in the dark, her slight weight pressed against him, her head on his shoulder, her bent knee nestled against his sleeping sex. And he wondered what he’d gotten himself into and how, when it was time, he was going to find it in him to get himself out.
“It’s not like you haven’t had a guy sleep over before,” Phoebe muttered to herself the next morning as she inventoried her refrigerator for the makings of omelettes.
Granted, it had been Leslie’s grandson and he’d been six years old at the time and he’d slept on her sofa in his Power Rangers pj’s.
Her cheeks flamed with heat. Daniel didn’t sleep in pj’s, although he could definitely fall into the Power Rangers category.
A nervous laugh burst out. The things they had done in her bed.
She flashed on a memory of his dark head at her breast, between her legs and almost had a meltdown over the vegetable crisper.
“Snap out of it,” she sputtered and started cracking eggs.
She was a big girl. And now she had a lover.
“A lover.” A goofy smile stretched her mouth.
She hadn’t been a virgin but neither had she experienced anything like the pleasure Daniel had brought her last night.
Several times.
She covered her heated cheeks with her hands.
Who knew that those red-hot love scenes she read in her romance novels weren’t necessarily figments of the authors’ imaginations. And who knew that Daniel Barone could hold his own—and then some—with those fictional lovers who knew exactly where and how to touch a woman until he reduced her to a mindless, whimpering lump.
Many, many times.
Another river of heat sluiced through her blood. She honestly hadn’t known she’d been capable of so many— Well, to sum it up concisely: until Daniel Barone landed in her bed the only time “multi” had preceded a word describing her, it had been attached to “tasking.”
She set a skillet on the burner, turned on the heat and wondered if a person could become a nymphomaniac overnight. Then she wondered if nymphomaniac was a hyphenated word. If so, she would have two new hyphenated terms—nympho and multi—to add to her growing list of ‘Things she’d never been’.
And then she wondered if she was just plain nuts when she realized she’d thrown the eggshells in the bowl and the eggs in the garbage.
She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath.
“Get a grip.”
She glanced at the clock. It was a little past eight-thirty. She’d been up long enough to take a quick shower, check to make sure Daniel was still sleeping, slip in a fresh set of contacts, check on Daniel again, fluff her hair, check on Daniel yet again, decide what to wear and then change her mind seven times, check on Daniel one final time, and have a nervous breakdown in her kitchen.
By anyone’s standards, it had been a pretty full morning. But nervous-breakdown time was now officially over. She glanced down at her pink shorts and her pink tank top, under which she wore no bra because earlier she’d had another moment of insanity and now she was afraid to go back in the bedroom and have him wake up and catch her in the act of changing.
She looked fine. Except possibly for the condition of her nipples, which poked against her top like new erasers on number-two lead pencils and more or less gave away what she’d been thinking about since she’d awakened with a beautiful naked man sprawled in her bed this morning.
“Help,” she pleaded skyward and started over on the omelettes. When both the yokes and the whites landed in the bowl this time, she took it as a good sign. When she heard the bathroom door open then close down the hall, she considered running out the back door.
The dreaded morning-after scene was only moments away.
She’d thought it all out in the shower. She wo
uld play it casual. He was bound to have second thoughts. She wasn’t going to cling; she wasn’t going to come undone when he walked out the door. She was going to feed him, thank him for a lovely night and wave goodbye with a smile.
She could do this. She could.
What she couldn’t do when she heard his footsteps coming down the hall toward the kitchen was turn around.
So she didn’t. With unsteady hands, she poured her egg mix in the skillet.
“Smells good.” His morning voice behind her was as gruff and smoky as she’d imagined.
Ordering herself not to hyperventilate, she tossed her best Martha Stewart imitation over her shoulder. “Hope you like omelettes.”
“Omelettes sound great. I’m just not sure I’m dressed well enough for this obviously fine eating establishment.”
Keep it perky, she told herself. “Well, we do have standards. No shirt, no shoes—” She couldn’t stand it anymore. She turned around…to see him standing there in nothing but his boxers. Her heart flat out stopped.
“No service?” His lips quirked.
She swallowed. “No problem.”
He was so gorgeous. Sleekly tanned muscles, long, sinewy limbs, broad chest. His hair was so artlessly mussed, so melt-your-bones sexy, it made her want to cry. Coupled with the dark stubble of his morning beard, the penetrating blue of his eyes, he was a walking, talking erotic fantasy.
And at the moment, he was her walking, talking erotic fantasy.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Could only watch as he moved around her table like a sleek, prowling cat and stopped directly in front of her.
“Turn it off, Phoebe.”
Turn it off? she thought desperately as her gaze fastened shamelessly on his mouth. I can’t turn it off. Not if the it you’re taking about is me. Not when you look like that. Not when you look at me like that.