“Yes. Yes, I need to know who I think I’m falling in love with.”
His whole body stiffened. “Is that what you’re feeling?”
“Yes.” Mollie didn’t want it to be that way, but apparently her brain didn’t get a vote. Her heart had already cast the die. She’d known that without any hesitation the moment he walked into her emergency department covered in blood and pale as a ghost.
Rafe pulled her roughly to him, moving his hands so that one was in the small of her back, grinding her against his erection. The other fisted in her low ponytail, jerking her head into position for his kiss. “Then feel more.” A hip thrust pushed him against her belly as his legs moved to the outside of hers, caging her in. “Feel more of that. Let yourself only feel me.”
His mouth ravaged hers. Owned hers. Forced her to instantly give in to his demand, because there was no ignoring the passion he ignited with every swipe of his tongue. With the way his teeth nipped and pulled at her lower lip, sending little shocks of needle-sharp pain that somehow morphed into needle-sharp flares of arousal by the time the sensation traveled down through the network of nerves to settle in between her legs. His tongue surged in and out, tangling with hers in an interplay that was a promise of what was to come.
Mollie had never been so aroused, so fast. Especially never when she was this mad. This confused. But the heat of their argument, the uncertainty she felt, ratcheted up every sensation. He wanted her to feel more? Well, it was impossible not to. But he’d damn well better feel the same thing.
So she didn’t hold back. There was no need to be quiet like in the hospital and Mollie moaned her arousal. She met every twisting taste of his tongue with her own. Used her teeth on his lip which immediately caused another circling grind of his hips into her. If this was a competition? They’d both win. Period.
Rafe whipped her top over her head. Didn’t bother to undo the clasp of her bra. No, he just ripped it apart with a swift downward slice of his hand. The lace hadn’t even fluttered to the ground before his mouth was on her breast. It was a direct hit, too. Right to the nipple. Right to sucking it so hard Mollie felt her eyes roll back in her head. She’d never believed that anyone could actually orgasm just from having their breasts fondled. In three seconds, though, Rafe had almost changed her mind.
The callouses on his big hand scraped against her other nipple as he palmed it in a fast circle. The combination of the sucking and the circling on both sides at the same time was . . . holy crap, but it was good. It was rough and wet and there was every possibility she could feel every single tiny bump of his taste buds as they laved her ultra-sensitive nipple.
Mollie leapt up, wrapping her legs around his waist. Why wait for him? She rocked back and forth against the waistband of his pajama pants. With how hot he’d already made her, it wouldn’t take much to push her over the edge. Rafe didn’t get to say. He didn’t get to be in control.
As though he’d read her mind, his head shot up and he murmured, “No.”
“No, what?”
“No, you don’t get to come yet. Not without me.” And right when she was about to tell Rafe exactly where he could stuff his controlling tendencies, he continued. “Please, Mollie. I want us to be together. I want us to do this together. To share it.”
Okay. That was tender and romantic and utterly at odds with their almost angry fight-sex vibe. She dropped her feet back to the ground and unwound the arms she’d tightened around his neck.
“Why? What is it that you feel, Rafe? If you can’t tell me anything else, at least be honest with me about that. We dipped our toes into it at the hospital. This—” Mollie waved a hand to indicate the pajamas he’d run out of the house in “—this whole thing going down right now . . . you wouldn’t do this if we were as casual as we initially said we would be. You wouldn’t have chased after me. Forget saving your pride and being cautious and just tell me, no-holds-barred, what you feel.”
Rafe paced away from her a few steps. More than a few, actually. Enough that Mollie started to wonder if she’d been wrong, and if he was just washing his hands of the whole conversation.
He braced his right hand high up against the thick bark of a pine tree. “I feel like I’m in a new country. One where I don’t speak the language or know the roads. And then you appeared and you’re my map. My translator.”
So much for romance. “You can hire someone to do all that.”
“No. Listen. I don’t tell people what I feel. Ever. I’m going to suck at this, so if that’s what you want? You have to wait and be patient as I try to get it out.”
Fair enough. “Go on.”
“That’s how it started. I mean, you’re hot as hell, so I noticed the total package. But you made me feel less alone. You made me feel like I belonged, when I thought I’d never feel that way again. You made me feel happy. Feel important. Two other things that I thought I’d never feel again. Most of all? You made me feel like myself. That’s huge. You don’t know how huge.”
Mollie hadn’t expected that much from him. Each word had been slow and halting, as if Rafe truly was digging up secret emotions never intended to see the light of day. It wasn’t poetry and flowers and compliments.
It was better.
It was real. Raw. Exactly what she’d asked of him. Exactly what she needed to push away the anger and remind her of the remarkable strong, vivid, caring heart at the center of this multilayered man.
Her sneakers crunched over the mat of pine needles as she crossed to him. Mollie put a hand on his shoulder. “Rafe—”
Dropping his arm, he turned around, hands hanging at his sides. “I feel a hell of a lot. I feel things I’ve never felt before and don’t know what to do about it. Don’t know how to integrate the sunshine you pour into my life with the other shit that’s piled up in it. Selfishly, though, I want to. I want you in it. I want you with me. I want to show you all of me. Even the ugly parts.”
“I want that, too.”
“Trust me, you don’t. You really don’t. I’m asking you to feel more because I already do. Because I want you to feel as much as I do. Which, yeah, is probably love. How the hell would I know? I just know that it’s new and more and different and irresistible.” Rafe laced his fingers with hers. “So I want you to feel exactly what I do. That’s why I want you to come with me. I want to feel you ripple around me as my dick pulses into you.”
It was perfect. Rafe was perfect. That unpolished honesty pretty much sent her heart into an emotional orgasm. Which did put her one ahead of him, but that’d be Mollie’s secret. “Together,” she breathed, squeezing his hands.
His head whipped back and forth, scanning the gathering darkness for she didn’t know what. “Come over here.” Rafe led her past a vibrantly yellow gorse bush, past a cluster of enormous tree ferns, to a tree lying on its side. From the padding of deep green moss all along the top of it, it must’ve fallen in a storm years before. He sat, but put his hands on her hips to keep her in place.
Rafe hooked his thumbs into her scrub pants, but didn’t pull them down. First, he licked along their edge, drawing a straight line of wet heat across her belly. That wetness caught the hint of breeze swirling through the forest and magnified its chill.
Goose bumps erupted from shoulder to wrist, neck to hip, but not in a bad way. It was just more sensation, more overload of awareness of every inch of skin on her body. Awareness of the rough stubble of his cheek right next to the softness of his firm lips. The tease of a few strands of Rafe’s hair brushing against her hip. Her nipples tightened into aching, hard points that almost screamed with need for him.
Slowly, torturously slowly, he dragged down her pants. As every inch that was exposed, Rafe nibbled his way down each thigh. Each time he switched legs, he brushed against the lace of her panties. Thin lace that in no way prevented her from feeling the shock of his touch against her most sensitive flesh.
Mollie grabbed for the string tie at his waist. “Let’s do this.”
Rafe
batted her away, but then took her hands. Pressed the backs of them, one by one, to his lips. “You don’t understand. I’m ready to go off here like a teenager just from touching you. From being with you. Just you, Mollie. From the fucking awe that you want to be with me. Until you’re screaming with need for me, until you catch up to how I’m drowning in the need to be in you, my clothes have to stay on.”
It was the most romantic come-on she’d ever heard. But she didn’t think it was just a line. Mollie truly believed that he was at his limit and she reveled in being the one who’d pushed him there. They were far closer to being on the same page than he knew. “I’m barely treading water here, Rafe.”
“Not good enough.” He locked his teeth in her panties, cranked his head away from his hand fisted on their seam, and ripped them right off. The sound seemed overly loud in the clearing, filled with only the faint rustle of leaves and an occasional chirp of a sparrow. That sound, that tiny, fabric-rending sound brought home to her that they were not in a bedroom, not anywhere with doors. That they were the interlopers in this lush overgrowth.
Rafe pushed her pants to her ankles at the same time that he raked his teeth down her slit. Mollie threw back her head and screamed as pleasure jolted through her. Pleasure. Need. Lust. Want.
Rafe.
All of it came down to him.
Her whole world centered on him. On his tongue licking her open. At his two fingers crooked inside her slightly against her G-spot. At the strength of his shoulders braced between her quivering thighs. At the sensual sight of his dark hair against her pale skin. At the bruising grip of his hands on her butt.
Mollie raked her nails across the thick ridge of steely muscles along his shoulders. And then jerked back from him two steps as she remembered his injury. “Rafe, are you in pain? Are you sure I should be touching you?”
“I’ll be in more pain if you don’t touch me.”
A quick push of her heels against each other had her sneakers off. Mollie stepped out of her pants and sat on Rafe. She locked her ankles behind him. “I don’t have a condom. Do you have a plan?”
“I don’t have one, either. But I’m clean. I know you may not feel like you have any reason to trust me right now, but I wouldn’t lie to you about that. You’re the only person I’ve had sex with in six months.”
“I’m on the pill. And I do trust you. And when we’re done, you’re going to explain to me why you think I shouldn’t. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
With that, Mollie lifted his penis out of his pajama pants, tucking their edge under his tautly plumped balls. Then she sank onto his length. Naked, inside and out. Which was yes, a little weird with Rafe still essentially dressed.
A little weird, but a lot amazing. Fantastic. Mind-blowing. The feeling was similar to the first time she’d gone skinny-dipping in the ocean. It was so freeing. Nothing held back. Nothing covered up. Except for where Rafe touched her. And those patches of skin vibrated beneath his hands.
“Mollie. Mollie, I . . . I can’t wait.”
She pressed her heels more tightly into his back. Kept her chest arched away from his injury, but worked her hips faster and scrunched even closer as she rubbed and lifted and worked him in and against her. “Don’t wait. You told me, Rafe. Just feel.”
A groan ripped out of his throat, long and low. His fingertips drilled into her butt and his head tipped back, mouth open. Mollie had the glorious and entirely new sensation of each pulse of wetness as he spent inside her, which kicked her orgasm over the edge into an explosion of light and heat and tingly pure joy shooting through her body.
She slid between his thighs to sit on the edge of the soft moss-covered trunk, still keeping him inside her as aftershocks made both of them quiver. There was only the sound of their panting. Rafe tipped his forehead to touch hers.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For trusting me.” He wedged his hand between them to rest on her heart. “I have to say that now, before you change your mind. So thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” It seemed an oddly formal response, but Mollie didn’t know what else to say.
“We need to talk.”
The four words most hated in the entire history of relationships. Not what anyone wanted to hear with their lover’s penis still hot and thick inside them. But if he was finally willing to come clean and fill in the innumerable blanks of his life?
Well, that was just what Mollie had requested.
She really ought to be more careful what she wished for.
Chapter 20
Somewhere in the forest at dusk
Mood on the tree trunk—scared to death
Rafe had spent his whole adult life technically operating outside the law. Breaking one more legality shouldn’t be a big deal, right?
Business as usual.
Situation normal . . . all fucked up.
He’d tried to be good. He’d followed each and every one of Delaney’s rules about how to live their new life. Or tried damn hard, anyway. Turned over enough new leaves to fill this forest.
But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—lie to Mollie anymore. He wouldn’t hurt her like that. She deserved the truth. Hell, she’d deserved it from the start. Sex was one thing. Friendship another. Where they stood right now, though, was deeper than either of those.
But naked wasn’t great. A serious conversation with his balls hanging down on something green and squishy? Talk about distracting.
Hands on her ass for support, Rafe stood, and then gently let Mollie unwind herself from him. Wordlessly, he picked up her clothes and handed them over. At least, the ones he hadn’t ripped to shreds. If she was still talking to him after tonight? He’d make sure to buy her a replacement bra and panty set. Maybe an even dozen. That way he’d have license to rip a few more off.
Not that he put the chances of Mollie still being on speaking terms with him after the next half hour at anything better than hundred to one odds. Might as well bet against the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Just as little chance of winning.
Once her scrubs were back on, and Rafe had both legs in his freaking pajamas—not what he would’ve chosen for this moment, but her cut-and-run routine hadn’t given him time to put on a suit—she came closer. Used her fingertips to smooth the edges of the tape down around the gauze on his chest.
“I don’t see any seepage from the wound. Do you feel okay?”
Her concern blew him away and Rafe didn’t think he’d ever get used to it. Or the tender smile that absolutely destroyed whatever scraps of a wall were still up around his heart. “After sex with you? I feel like I could pick up this log and surf it straight over to Hawaii.”
A different kind of a smile ghosted across her face. A mix of humor and disappointment. Like teachers used to give him when he’d offer a funny as hell response to cover up when he didn’t actually know an answer. “You know, Hawaii isn’t actually across from Oregon. Or you would know that if you were from around here. Which I’m figuring out that you probably are not.”
“Yeah.”
Mollie dropped her hand. “Should I bother asking where you’re really from? Or would you just evade the question again?”
“I’m going to tell you the truth.” Rafe pulled on his top. Hoped to hell that wasn’t the last time she ever touched him. “I’m going to tell you everything. Right now.”
This was it. The moment that might change everything. The moment his brothers very well might end up cursing him for. Because taking this leap, telling Mollie, didn’t just violate the most basic rule of WITSEC. It put all the Maguires potentially at risk.
It could play out a bunch of different ways. Mollie might freak out at the truth of his less-than-respectable past employment. Run straight to the US Marshals office and rat him out. Or she might tell her nearest and dearest in confidence, and then they’d decide to tell the Marshals. Or the police. Or the newspaper, which in today’s internet-based society could lead to McGinty’s crew tracking
them down in a day.
His choice to tell her risked everything.
Except that it wasn’t a choice. It was the only option. Rafe believed Mollie cared for him a whole hell of a lot. So if they were going to move forward at all—not that he’d ever imagined that happening with anyone once he joined WITSEC—he owed her the basic respect of the facts. The real facts about himself.
“That sounds ominous.”
It sure as hell was. Rafe had no idea where to start. If he eased in slow with the whole life story, he might lose her before he got to the why of it all. If he started from today and went backward? That was starting with a lie and trying to excuse it.
He decided to go with a piece of advice from his dad. One he’d heard him say hundreds of times. When you’re in trouble with a woman, start by apologizing. The old man had taught him lots of things. How to throw back a shot and a beer. How to pick a lock. Not to telegraph a punch. The apology thing, though, that was the most important. Probably the only thing that could save his hide right now.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mollie. So sorry that I won’t even ask you to forgive me. I only ask that you’ll listen. Listen to it all. Starting with how sorry I am.”
She didn’t back down one bit. God, he loved that she wasn’t scared to stand up to him. No other woman had ever gone toe-to-toe with him the way the doc did. Crossing her arms, Mollie coolly asked, “For what?”
“For lying to you.”
“About?”
Everything? Rafe caught himself right before that word escaped. That answer probably wouldn’t be a good start. No sarcasm. No short answers, either. Long explanations were the way to go. All the facts. Even the ones that made him look like a dangerous dick.
Rafe shoved his fingers through his hair. And combed out something he hoped to hell was a leaf and not a giant-ass spider. “For lying to you from the moment we met. Not because I wanted to. Not because I was playing you. But because I promised the United States government that I wouldn’t tell the truth to anyone.”
Bad for Her Page 24