by Edie Harris
Which left his spy in nothing but a positively indecent pair of red panties.
It was as though a needle of pure adrenaline had been jabbed straight into his heart. There was a roaring in his head, echoing in his ears until his entire body buzzed with the vibrations of his pounding pulse.
The silence in the room was a tangible thing. His gaze gorged on the shapes of her, the sweet lines and curves, the porcelain blush he felt certain would dissolve like cotton candy under his tongue.
Then he noticed the band of flesh-colored fabric circling her waist. Without thought, he reached out to trace the elasticized loop and small plastic clasp lying loosely just above her lace-covered bottom. “So this is how you carried the gun,” he murmured, picturing the barrel of the assault rifle secured by the elastic—one firm tug would harmlessly undo the clasp, the body of the weapon hidden in the meantime beneath the layers of her long skirt. “What is it made from?”
“My bra.”
Chuckling, he cautiously reached out and gently undid the hook-and-eye closures sitting along her right hip. “Do you have something against bras, Ms. McCallister? This is the second time I’ve discovered you without one.”
She rested her chin on her shoulder and gave him a measuring look from beneath her lashes. Her lips curved. “I can’t believe you’re complaining, Toby.”
His heart tripped. You matter, she’d told him as she came around his fingers two nights ago. You matter.
He gently patted one of the towels over the back of her neck, her bare shoulders and the dip of her spine. Under his ministrations, her fair skin pinkened, and the sight made his mouth water. “I’ve never had any girlfriends. I think I told you that.” He knew he’d told her that, on their car ride to the manor. He remembered her sudden silence, remembered wondering what had caused it. He’d determined that she was...surprised, at the lack. His knuckles brushed her shoulder blade, and a fresh wave of goose bumps broke out over her skin. “I’m assuming you want to know why, don’t you?”
She hummed at the back of her throat, seeming to lean in to his touch, and his gut clenched.
He took that as a yes. “So, I’ve never had any.” The towel drifted down her back, over her arms hanging loosely at her sides. His mouth went dry as he considered the view, should he stand in front of her, and, God, he was hurting. Troubled as he’d never been in his life. “No coffees. No dates. No one-night stands.” Clutched in his fist, the towel hesitated over the perky roundness of her backside. He could shatter diamonds between his clenched teeth as he battled the need to bite her. There. On her ass.
Tobias wanted to bite her ass, then lick away the red marks. He wanted to grab her by the hips and rip those red panties to shreds, then get his tongue between her legs and drink down the sweetness he’d tasted on his fingers days earlier. He wanted to put his palm flat between her shoulder blades and push, to force her to bend and—
The towel scrubbed with more force than necessary over the twin dimples above that spectacular bottom. “In all my life, I’ve only had one encounter with the opposite sex.” Handing her the other towel, so she could do...whatever it was she would do...to her front, he dropped to his knees behind her and began to work his way down her legs with brisk strokes of the terrycloth.
Hell. Now her ass was eye-level.
He refused to look, not until he’d spit out this bit of idiocy. “I was seventeen. It was the night before college graduation. I’d never so much as kissed a girl.” Tobias thought it went without saying that when one was the skinny weirdo kid five years younger than his classmates, one was not expected to have kissed many girls. Or any, for that matter. “I went to a party hosted by one of the frats. Long story short, a girl from one of the sororities and I drank too much, ended up in one of the bedrooms and when I left for my dorm around three in the morning, I had not only gotten my first kiss, I’d also gotten rid of my virginity.” The path of the towel followed the insides of her calves and up, up.
Up. Past her knees, to her inner thighs, and any breathing he planned on doing promptly stalled in his lungs. “I was awful at talking to anyone. Anyone at all, male or female. It’s why I decided to go to law school—because I assumed there I would finally learn how to speak from a place of confidence. I couldn’t join the family business if I stumbled over every word to a stranger or refused to make eye contact with clients. And I was right.” He dropped the towel suddenly, letting it land between her bare feet, and deliberately wrapped his hands around her ankles. “I got over my aversion to speaking.” Slowly, so very slowly, his palms slid up her smooth calves. “I joined Faraday Industries.” The backs of her knees were soft, and sensitive—she shifted on the balls of her feet as his hands continued to climb. “But I never cared about a repeat performance with a woman. I couldn’t be completely honest about what I did for a living.” God, her thighs were firm, taut with muscle he again wanted to sink his teeth into. “And anyone who expressed an interest tended to focus that interest on my name or my money.” Or his tailor, in one strange incident at a hotel bar in Amsterdam. “My hand was good enough company. Until you, Chandler.”
Her towel fell to the floor, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. “Tell me,” she murmured, her husky voice hitching when he cupped her lower curves where thigh met perfect bottom, and he recognized, in that animal hindbrain of his he so rarely tapped into, precisely what her demand meant.
“I want to touch you like I did after your bad dream. I want to taste you and feel you and die in you.” Surrendering, he leaned forward and sank his teeth into one plump cheek and was rewarded with her heartfelt moan. His tongue swept out to test the rain-cooled flesh, his lips closing in a tender kiss as he shifted to hold her hips, fierce pride slicing through him at her visceral shiver. He did that to her. Him. “I want to learn you, until I can speak you better than you can speak yourself. From a place of confidence, Chandler.” His fingertips gripped with near-bruising force. “Give me the chance.”
Turning abruptly, she bent and slanted her full lips over his, her hands on either side of his face. He didn’t even have time to appreciate the flash of rosy pink nipples capping small breasts before he was lost in her kiss, the fresh rush of lust combining with the potent familiarity of her mouth to erase all thought from his brain.
His arms banded around her waist in an unbreakable hold as they fell deeper into the kiss. She held his head in her hands, palms scraping over the stubble he hadn’t shaved away that morning, fingers spearing into his hair. Her teeth nipped and nibbled at him, until he was forced to take a bite himself, just to remind her that he would fight back.
He’d always fight back, for her.
Settling on his heels, he tore away from her seeking mouth, needing to see her bare before him, no barriers standing in his path. Fingertips curling into the lace, he tugged her panties past her knees and steadied her by her hips as she stepped out of them. And then she was utterly naked.
All the oxygen in his lungs escaped in a strained whoosh. “You stop my heart, Chandler,” he confessed in a harsh whisper, unable to look away.
Hot color splashed across her cheeks and down her throat to her upper chest. Candy-pink nipples hardened under his stare—and further when he reached out to brush the pads of his thumbs over them—flourishes of femininity atop the shy curves of her breasts. She didn’t fill his palms, but he didn’t need her to, not when she stood looking down at him with pride in her eyes; pride in herself, pride in him. The flat plane of her stomach and the subtle dip of her waist gave way to a taut lower abdomen, slim hips and tight thighs. Chandler was an athlete from head to toe, alive to her pores like no woman he’d ever met.
Perhaps if he held her close enough, some of that life would transfer onto him. Perhaps he could destroy the collar with which he choked the majority of his emotions, just from this contact with her.
It was worth a shot.
; She traced his cheekbone with a finger before stroking over his jaw with her knuckles, her expression open, and he saw everything of her in it: her strength, her loyalty, her anguish, her heart. Yes, her heart.
But as he opened his mouth to question her, she yanked the loosened bow tie from beneath his collar, held it between them and dropped it to the floor. “Toby,” she murmured calmly, one eyebrow arched in question, “why are you still dressed?”
He rose to his feet without a word, toeing off his dress shoes as his fingers fell to his buttons. Eyes locked on hers, he efficiently rid himself of his shirt, trousers, socks and underwear, leaving him just as bare as her, though not nearly as casual about it.
Any uncertainty, however, fled his mind as she placed both hands flat against his chest, seeming to test the muscle there. Involuntarily, he flexed, the flesh beneath her palms tingling in reaction to her touch. She sucked in a sharp breath and danced her palms up over his shoulders to his neck, until he felt the bite of her fingernails against his skin.
All this without taking her eyes from his.
“Baby.” Rising on tiptoe, she licked at his lower lip, and he grunted before stealing past her lips for a claiming sort of kiss. Who was doing the claiming, he wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter, not when she breathed, “Your heart isn’t the only one in trouble,” before she silenced any response with her mouth to his throat.
The scent of the rain clung to her temples, mixed with a faint hint of exertion, and he immediately wanted to bury his face in her hair. To breathe her in. Tugging carefully at the elastic containing her ponytail, he freed the heavy fall of honey strands, combing through the alternately damp and dry locks with his fingers until he clutched handfuls of it and bent to take the scent into his nose. “You smell right,” he muttered, unable to articulate his meaning but knowing it was true.
She burrowed against the base of his throat, inhaling deeply. “So do you.”
She understands. Gathering her in his arms, he flopped back onto the bed. The mattress gave beneath their weight, sagging in that way of old mattresses, but he didn’t care. Chandler was kissing him, touching him, plucking and picking at the pieces of his soul with a direct connection to his dick. Until this moment, he hadn’t known his dick had anything to do with his soul, but apparently it did. Or at least, it did where Chandler was concerned. “I don’t have a condom.”
Grinning, she took the lobe of his ear between her teeth and nipped, making him shudder, and another sliver of his soul surrendered into her keeping. “Just the one? I expected more enthusiasm from a man in your state.”
Enthusiasm was not the problem. “My state?”
“You’re naked.” She paused, brown eyes gleaming with sly humor. “I’m naked.”
“Yes.” His hands roved everywhere. God, he couldn’t touch her enough, warm and soft and firm and smooth and draped over his body like a seductive sylph. “But that doesn’t solve the issue of protection.”
“There are condoms in the outside pocket of my bag.”
“There are?” Oh, thank God.
“I’m a regular Boy Scout.” She shrugged, lips pursed in a soft moue he couldn’t resist branding with a hard, fast kiss. Rolling off him, she sauntered—yes, sauntered, as if she had all the time in the goddamn world—to her suitcase and bent at the waist to rummage in the pockets.
He groaned at the sight of her bared pussy, peeking out at him from between the round handfuls of her ass in the cruelest tease of his life. “You really are trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
“The thought has crossed my mind.” Several foil packets hit the pillow next to him a second later, before a warm and willing Chandler crawled over his body like a cat, complete with purring as she straddled his hips. Her center hovered over his erection, taunting him, and the last of his restraint disintegrated as he stared at what he was suddenly convinced he’d choose for his last meal, should he ever wind up on death row.
One order of Chandler, please. No, nothing else. She’s the only taste I want on my tongue when I die. He tipped his chin in invitation. “Get up here.”
“Are you sure?”
“I might not be an expert, sweetheart, but I know what I want.” Tugging on the backs of her thighs, he urged her forward, up and over his chest until her knees were on either side of his head. The perfect view of her lush pussy, glistening with arousal that he had caused hovered just above his lips. “I know what you want, too.” The evidence was undeniable, and he smiled smugly as she lowered to his mouth.
He knew he held her too hard, too tightly, but he refused to allow her the chance to wriggle away, not when he was finally where he needed to be. The realization clicked into place, the missing piece to the puzzle he’d assumed was Chandler, but perhaps, in reality, the puzzle had been figuring out the two of them, together.
His tongue swept along her slit, gathering the heat and sweet slickness of her with each measured lick. What he’d stolen from his fingertips earlier this week hadn’t lied; she tasted like sex, intimate and wild and perfectly crafted to send the beast in him—leashed for so long because it had never been her on the other end of temptation—into growling raptures.
She moaned above him, her fingers drifting down to tangle and clench in his hair. “Oh, God. Toby.” Her hips twitched, and then she was riding his tongue, writhing when his lips closed around her clitoris and sucked. “Oh, baby, yes. Like that. Just like that.”
Groaning against her wet flesh, he brought one hand between them to circle the entrance to her body with a single fingertip.
“Tease,” she muttered, then gasped when, without warning, he thrust two fingers into her channel. Tiny muscles clamped around his invasion, and he felt it as surely as if it were his cock inside her, stroking evenly into and out of her needy body while his mouth continued to draw on her. He licked at her pink folds, eyes squeezed shut in concentration as he labored to steal every drop of her impending pleasure.
Because it was impending. She writhed against him, hands fisted and tugging on his hair, body fluttering around his thrusting fingers and centered over his greedy mouth. Yes, come for me, he thought, unwilling to tear his lips from her for even so long as it took to speak, not when she was so intent on using him to get off. Finish on my tongue. Ride me until you get there. Hell, ride me after. I’ll drink you for days.
He didn’t realize he was fairly snarling into her pussy until she abruptly threw herself off him, scrabbling for one of the condom packets. “I wasn’t done,” he growled, glaring at her. She’d stolen her orgasm from him, and, God, that pissed him off.
“I know. I know, but I...” Eyes glazed, face flushed, she slammed her mouth to his in a desperate kiss, licking the slickness from his lips in frantic laps of her darting tongue. With a groan, he returned the kiss full force, unable to keep the hunger at bay. His mind buzzed. His body hummed. Every last molecule of his being vibrated in recognition of the wild woman in his arms.
He wrapped her hair around his white-knuckled fists and rolled her to her back, his hips finding home between her legs. Wetness coated the tops of her thighs, and he ground his painful erection against the lips of her sex, shuddering at the sensation. “You need to put that condom on me. Now.”
Her fingers were shaking as she sheathed him, and he had to grit his teeth when she hefted him, testing the weight of him in one palm. “You’re so hard,” she murmured shakily. “I did this to you?”
“Yes,” he bit out, thrusting helplessly into her hands.
She wheezed out a laugh. “Well, aren’t I a naughty one.” Then she dared to squeeze him, pumping his cock like he’d done in solitude for far too long.
Enough. Wrapping one hand around her throat, he forced her to meet his gaze. “Warn me now if there’s some way I should or shouldn’t take you, Chandler. Because if you don’t, I’m simply going to do whatever the hell I want wit
h this hot little body of yours until I find what feels best for us both. And then I’m going to fuck you until I understand each and every nuance of that word.”
“From behind,” she gasped, sinuously turning onto her stomach beneath him. He propped himself on both arms above her, watching openmouthed as she lifted her perfect ass in offering, her shoulders to the bed and hands clutching the touseled sheets, her cheek pressed to the pillow. “Take me from behind. You’ll love it.”
Rising onto his knees, he placed a hand on her hip and gripped his erection, guiding the head to her opening and resting it there. “And what about you—will you love it?”
“Fuck yes.” Wriggling against him, trying to draw him into her body, she elicited a breathless, tormented noise that echoed in his ears like gunfire. “I’ll be so tight. You’ll get so deep.” More writhing. “You can control it all, baby, every thrust. Push us both to the edge.” She paused, breathless. “Take control, Toby. Take it.”
“Promise me something, sweetheart.” With torturous slowness, he sank his cock into the slick, squeezing heat of her perfect pussy. His vision blurred. “Promise me you’ll never stop telling me exactly what you want and how you want it.” And then he was buried to the hilt in heaven.
“I p-promise,” she whimpered, then moaned as he kept his length buried inside her and circled his hips against her backside. “Unh. Baby, please.”
“What was that noise you just made, Chandler?” Withdrawing caused sweat to bead on his forehead, his tension not eased even when he slid back into her beckoning body. “I swear it sounds...familiar.” Out, then in, then out again, until just the head of his cock rested inside her.
“Shut up.” She clenched around him, a warning, then wiggled her bottom to urge him on.
He thrust in, harder now, and goddamn, that was good. “Am I going to hear you come? Just like you heard me in the shower that morning?” Her inner muscles spasmed, the clasp of her pussy nothing short of spectacular, and he recognized her reaction was due to his words. His words. “Fuck. I...I won’t last.” His confession felt torn from his lips, so he pressed them to her shoulder before straightening behind her again. “I’m sorry, I—”