She dropped his hand. “And I’m sick of it.” In a sudden flurry of movement, she spun to face the massive mirror hanging over a long chest of drawers crafted from some light-colored wood. “And look there,” she said, pointing to herself in that white sweatsuit. “More colorlessness.”
Without a pause, she reached down and whipped her sweatshirt over her head. “I never want to see myself in these again.” She threw the top across the room. Then she shoved down the pants and flung them away with her foot, one flip-flop going along for the ride. The other she tossed, too, and it thunked against the wall, marring the pristine paint.
She stared at the mark, her chest heaving again, and it gave him time to appreciate the underwear. She was wearing a matching—and demure—lace bra and bikini panties in an understated buff color.
He toyed with mentioning it, certain they’d be the next victims of her unexpected ire, but he wanted to save some unwrapping for himself. His mind spun off, thinking how best to accomplish that. Should he ease up behind her right now, or lure her into the bathroom? How many kisses until he could walk his fingers to the back clasp of that bra? Would he slide her panties off at the first opportunity, or instead slip his hands underneath the stretchy fabric to cup her sweet little ass?
She whipped around while he was still deep in the selections of his imagined sensual buffet. “I’m ready for sex now,” she declared, and marched past him to the bathroom. “Are you coming?”
Startled, he stared after her. Was he coming? Shit, he hoped so. But man, even that might be in question, because by the time he’d reeled his tongue into his mouth and beaten back his surprise to hurry in her wake, she was already not only in the dim bathroom but was a shadowy figure behind the wavy glass of her two-will-fit-just-fine stand-alone shower.
The beige lace underthings lay flat on the floor like she’d removed then in haste and then stomped on them at leisure.
He flipped the switch to illuminate the stall and then he could see her better . . . still blurred by the shower glass, but that was definitely Juliet’s curvy outline and Juliet’s elegant back, the cleft between her perfect peach cheeks the only shadow that remained. God. His balls drew tight and more lust poured into his blood. Noah fisted his hands, holding himself back as the sexual gangster inside of him urged for a simple smash-and-grab.
Over the soft fall of water from the showerhead, Juliet’s unsteady voice reached him. “Those nerves I told you about . . .”
“Mmm?” His gaze glued on her unmoving figure, he started shucking off his clothes.
“I lost them.”
He smiled as he leaned over to unlace his boots, and was surprised by the sudden clumsiness of his fingers. “Maybe you misplaced them during your little strip show out there.”
“No,” her voice thinned. “I mean, I think I lost my nerve.”
“Ah, honey.” Naked, he put his hand on the stall’s door handle. “It’s just me.”
She let out a shaky laugh. “ ‘Just you.’ Oh, Noah.”
The door opened with an audible click and steam washed over him like hot breath.
Her head jerked around and she looked at him over one wet, creamy shoulder. “Oh, Noah.”
Her gaze whipped back around to the wall, but from that first, wide-eyed glance of hers, he knew it was going to be okay. He’d thought about this moment for years, showered with just this very fantasy more times than he could count, and though the hoodlum inside him wanted nothing more than to vandalize all that smooth and elegant skin with urgent touches and rough kisses, he found the control to approach her slow and steady.
One forefinger reached out to trace the bumps of her delicate spine. She shuddered, and he moved closer to lower his head and sip the water off her shoulder blade. Another shiver wracked her body and he chased goose bumps up the slope of her shoulder to the side of her neck. He took another lick.
Her body bumped back, out of the shower’s direct spray, and her ass brushed his cock. They both sucked in breaths. “I’ve never showered with a man before,” she confessed.
“Yeah?” Smiling against her skin, he reached for the liquid soap that sat in a nearby niche. With one hand, he managed to pump his palm full of the stuff. It smelled like her, classy and clean, and he took the scoop of his hand up to his nose for another heady inhalation. “I’ve never washed anyone as beautiful as you.”
“Like this . . . the light . . . naked . . . Noah.” His name soughed out as he pressed his slick hand to her belly. He rubbed in little circles and felt her press back against him again for support. With his other arm, he anchored her to him, not even trying to avoid the rounded pillows of her ass. He pressed himself there, distracting her from the way he was insinuating himself between her softness by the unceasing circles of his hand moving from hip bone to hip bone.
She moaned. “I’m a little embarrassed.”
“You’re turned on.”
“I know it’s ridiculous, but I’m a little embarrassed about that.”
It wasn’t ridiculous. Elegant, aloof Juliet Weston wasn’t used to letting someone so close.
“Noah, at the moment, I’m not even sure I can look at you.”
He rubbed his cheek against the sleek wet fall of her hair, and let his soapy hand travel upward. “At the moment, you don’t have to look at me, baby. You just have to feel me.” Feel alive. He cupped her breast, capturing it in the cage of his hand as if it was a wild bird. Against the edge of his thumb, he felt her heart beating erratically and the sensation delivered another blast of lust to boil his blood.
She squirmed, and his cock nudged deeper until he had to tighten his hold on her breast to keep her still and keep him sane. At her needy whimper he kneaded her breast again, and then he drew his fingertips together and outward, drawing them to the areola and then farther, tugging on her hard little nipple.
Another sweet, plaintive moan had him pressing his cheek to hers, and he noted her eyes were squeezed shut with enough force that lines fanned from their corners. He kissed her there, and then leaned around her to sweep his tongue across her lashes. “Relax.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” Both of his hands cupped her breasts now, and he played there, gentle on the full flesh, and less so on the tight buds. As he plucked them, her head fell back against his shoulder, but there was nothing boneless about her body. Even as he saw the flush of arousal suffusing her face, he could feel the fine tremors shaking her tense frame.
“Noah . . .”
“You have a seventy-gallon hot water heater, we have plenty of time.” A quickie wouldn’t be enough for either of them, would it? Him, to exorcise the fantasies with real-life Juliet sex, and for her, didn’t she deserve a prolonged reintroduction to man-woman pleasures?
But her body was getting more rigid by the moment and then he saw her teeth bite down on her bottom lip. This wasn’t making her bloom, he realized, it was making her hurt.
Shit. How long since she’d let herself have this little taste of life? She was reaching for it and battling against it, both with such force that she was shaking with the dueling purposes.
And then Noah knew.
Juliet wouldn’t have orgasmed on her own. Not by her own hand, not with some naughty-girl toy. Not when her husband was dying, not while she was grieving, not ever in . . .
Years?
For himself, he wanted to play with the possibilities of that for hours. For her, he was going to have to give her a fast, ruthless push over the brink.
The gangster inside of him grinned, but he told the bad boy to settle down. This could be his single chance at her climax and he was going to let her fly solo.
With the fingers of one hand still rolling a berried nipple, he shoved the other into the shower spray to rinse off the soap, then brought it down between her thighs. He didn’t take it slow, she was needy enough. Instead, he speared his middle and forefinger through her wet curls and between her swollen layers to trap his quarry.
She fro
ze, every muscle tight. Like her heart, this little organ was beating too, rising toward his touch and hungry for what he offered. In his fantasies he spent hours getting to know this sweet morsel of flesh, but now, he accepted he might only have these few moments.
Wrapping her with his left arm, he used the middle finger of his right hand to draw a snug circle around the stem of the hard bud. All her muscles tightened, her spine as stiff as if he’d lashed her to a pole. But her support was his body behind her, her bond his left arm circling just below her breasts, her instrument of torture the firm ring he drew around her with his finger.
On his next pass, new wetness met the tip of his long digit. He jolted, heat rocketing through him at the slippery sign of her surging desire. Without thinking twice, he brought his finger to his mouth, sucking off the flavor of her, sucking her essence into his mouth.
She whimpered, and he glanced down to see she was watching him, her face flushed and her blue and green eyes wide and trained on his mouth. Oh, yeah. He dropped his hand and dipped it in her softness again. Then he lifted his finger to her lips, offering to feed her that distinct proof of life. “Try it,” he urged her. “It’s as good as your next breath.”
He painted her lower lip and his blood burned again as her tongue crept out to taste. He rubbed the rest of the liquid arousal along the velvet surface and saw her flush deepen.
“My turn,” he said, his voice hoarse as he lowered his hand. “This next taste is mine.”
Seeking the lush well inside her, his fingers brushed her erect clitoris, and just with that small nudge, she flew. With a low moan, she pressed back against him. Her shoulder blades dug into his chest, her back bowed, and the cheeks of her ass tightened along the length of his cock.
He would have lost it, surely should have lost it, but to his eternal shock, his instinct to support her writhing body overrode the sexual demand pounding in his blood.
Miracle of miracles. Maybe he was noble Noah after all.
She moved through shudders, to tremors, to the sweetest little shivers, and he went along for the ride with her, his finger easing up on her sensitive flesh as she quieted. Then she turned in his arms and buried her face against his chest.
“Baby.” He backed her into the shower spray again, intent on keeping her warm now that her climax had passed. His hand caressed her shoulders and she shivered again, her face still hidden. Shit, was she crying? Under where she pressed, beneath his skin, his sinew, and his skeleton, beneath all those protective layers were four aching chambers that twisted and squeezed at the thought of her tears.
At the reality of her regrets.
At the realization that he’d never have more of her than this.
Then, in that same spot, a sharper pain stung. For a minute it didn’t register as separate from the other hurt. Then it came again, another small bite of sensation and he looked down, pushing her away at the same time.
Her eyes were half-mast, her mouth swollen. She reached up to his chest, tracing with her thumb the shallow tracks of her teeth. “I did that,” she said.
Astonished, he stared at the marks and then at the smug expression of the woman.
“I want to do it some more,” she said.
His skin flashed hot and then he was on the move, dragging her from the shower and then dragging a towel over their flesh, the entire time battling the elegant woman whom he’d always assumed didn’t have a whiff of warrior inside her.
But she went heads up into a skirmish with him right now. Apparently she wanted undelayed, unfettered access to his body and she fought to touch him, taste him, crawl over him even when they were standing, even when he was trying to do something as uncomplicated as getting her across the room and horizontal on that whipped cream- colored bed.
“Take it easy,” he said, holding her by the shoulders so he could move without their feet tangling and taking them both to the floor.
“I want it hard.”
Shaking his head, he laughed. “Really, baby. Relax.”
“Not till I get what I want.” She lunged for him, and twined her arms around his neck and one calf around his hip. The hot, melting center of her body scalded his thigh. Groaning, he bent his knee to give her some friction.
She moaned, and licked across his pecs to find one of his nipples. He hissed in a hard breath, then gathered his resolve and folded her up in his arms.
She made a muffled protest against the side of his neck and rubbed one of her nipples along the hard plane of his chest. Striding for the mattress, he dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You’re a maniac, do you know that?”
“Maniac for your body.”
He laughed, dropping her to the mattress, then following her down as soon as he managed to get on the condom he had in his pants. She went wild again, writhing under him, delivering hot kisses, scratching his back with her nails.
Lust slammed into him again, harder this time. Desperate to slow things down, he reached back to close his hands on her wrists before the sharp edge of her fingernails had him coming over her belly before he could make it inside her.
He pressed her hands to the mattress and reared onto his knees to put space between them . . . and to let him look at her creamy skin, her pretty curves, the pink-tipped breasts and the pink wetness waiting for him between her splayed thighs. She was breathing hard.
He didn’t think he was breathing at all.
“Noah. Noah, please.”
There was desperation in Juliet’s voice, renewed tension in her quivering body. His inner sexual thug was gleeful, urging him on in single-syllable words.
Fuck her. Fuck her fast. Fuck her hard.
But this was Juliet. Juliet!
The woman he’d watched, the woman he’d wanted, for something like a hundred years.
So he closed his ears to that low-life gangster and treated her like the lady she was. He penetrated slow, sliding against hot, tender tissues at a pace that had him gritting his teeth. She moaned as he seated himself as deep as he dared, but he didn’t let that little sound hurry him either.
Instead, he took his time and took her with the caution and care that she deserved. He used a gentle rhythm and shallow strokes, but still pleasure burned. When his climax could no longer be denied, he wet his thumb and touched her again, sending her on a soft, sweet journey. As her body quaked against his, he ground his teeth harder and resisted the urge to plunge deep. Holding steady, he didn’t move another inch, but let her squeezing contractions around his cock do the work to bring him off. His body shaking, he swallowed his groan of satisfaction until both their bodies were still.
As he pulled away, Juliet’s eyes were closed and her mouth looked bruised. Guilt swamped him—those kisses had been too damn rough—and he tried to apologize by pressing his lips to her forehead. She made a little murmur and shivered, so he drew the covers over her and went off to deal with the rubber. When he came back, she was sound asleep, and he stood there, watching. The sun was higher in the sky and now flooded the room. When its rays burnished the gold of her hair, Noah closed his eyes and turned away from the almost-painful brightness.
Twelve
All war is deception.
—SUN TZU
Marlys stood by the door of her boutique, wrapping up her good-byes to one of her few former bed partners. A pharmaceutical rep, Phillip dropped by when he had some minutes to burn between appointments. She figured he had other, ulterior motives as well: He liked the coffee at the bakery next door, and he loved congratulating himself on having never offered her the flashy diamond and marriage proposal he’d planned.
When his brother couldn’t help himself and gossiped the news to her first—not such a surprise since he was a SoCal stringer for the tabloids—Marlys had dumped Pharmaceutical Phil that very night.
Another woman might have let him go through with the one-knee moment, but she’d spared them both the experience. Not only didn’t she want to be some man’s wife, she didn’t want to sleep with a marriage-
minded one either. Smacked of codependency.
Then the shop door swung open and Dean Long stepped in. She took the jolt of pleasure at the sight of him like a stab to the belly. The sharp sensation made her suck in a hard breath, and then she hid her sudden flush of yearning by grabbing Phil by the ears and planting a searing kiss on his lips.
She put tongue into it.
And a little panic.
When she let him go, she dried her bottom lip with the edge of her hand and then pushed her ex toward the door, feigning surprise at seeing Dean standing in the way. “Oh!” She hid her smirk behind her fingers.
Dazed, Phil wandered around the other man and outside without a word, but Marlys waved at his retreating back with an aspartame smile. “See you!”
Then she swung her attention to the newcomer. “And I didn’t expect to see you.” Her hands tugged on the wrap dress she wore with a pair of sleek riding-style boots and then adjusted the little cardigan she had on for extra warmth. “You didn’t mention it last night.”
He shrugged. “The way you scampered off clutching that beefstick, I thought I’d given you enough to worry about for one evening.”
“Worried? You don’t worry me.” After a little more light-hearted flirtation, she’d left him without a care in the world. He was cute, she’d decided once she was safe at home with her dog, but of no concern for a woman like herself.
“Then how about a late breakfast or an early lunch? Can you get away—or did you already spend all your free time on the guy you just poleaxed with that out-of-the-blue tonsil inspection?”
Crap. He hadn’t bought her act—and it made her mad, because she wasn’t completely sure of what she’d been trying to sell. Was she trying to prove to Dean that she could attract other men? That she could manage any man?
“Well?” He looked as if he couldn’t care less what she answered and that made her mad, too. But he was here, wasn’t he? Maybe he was a better actor than she was, but he hadn’t sought her out without reason.
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