by Tawny Weber
His fingers, accustomed to manipulating complex explosive wiring in the dark, made quick work of the hooks on her dress before tiptoeing down her spine. When they reached her hips they encountered fabric again. Her zipper gave way to flesh. Soft, succulent flesh.
God, she felt good.
Addictively good.
She gave a tiny moan of protest when he pulled away, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to see her.
His eyes, used to night maneuvers, had adjusted easily in the dim light. Without his body holding it in place, the heavy fabric of her dress fell, pooling at her hips for a moment before the weight pulled it to the floor with a soft thud.
Leaving her bare except for a tiny swatch of black silk.
Noah’s mind went blank, even as his eyes devoured her from the top of that silky black hair to the tips of those slender, stiletto clad feet.
“Oh, Baby,” he murmured. Holy mother, she was incredible.
Her head fell back against the cushioned wall, her eyes gleaming as she stared back at him.
“This is crazy.”
“How can something that feels this good be crazy?” he asked quietly, his eyes locked on the dream-worthy vision of his hands cupping, holding, squeezing those lush breasts. His thumbs circled her nipples, brushing back and forth over the silken pebbles.
“We shouldn’t be together like this. The two of us tighter, we’re a bad idea.”
But even as she murmured the words, she was reaching for him. Her hands made fast work of his shirt, shoving at the fabric to get to flesh.
As soon as she’d freed him of his shirt, she pressed her hands over his pecs, working her way down his six-pack. Her moan of appreciation made Noah damned grateful to the Navy for keeping his body in such good shape.
“Then let’s be bad,” he suggested, leaning forward to run his tongue over the sensitive tip of her breast before blowing softly on the quivering flesh. At the same time his fingers reached between her thighs to dance over her wet heat. “Let’s be really, really bad.”
Taking her throaty moan as agreement, he dropped to his knees. Leaning his head against her thigh for one second, he closed his eyes and breathed deep, reveling in the fact that he was here with her. That she was in his arms, real to his touch.
He never wanted to let her go again.
Noah slowly, reverently, slid her panties down her legs, his fingers caressing every inch of her flesh from the top of her thighs to the tips of her toes still encased in those sexy silver sandals.
As if she were a dream, he skimmed his hand back up the inside of her thigh, spreading her legs just enough so he could reach his goal.
Noah traced one finger along her pouty, wet folds, then leaned forward to sip at her heat. He wanted to go slow. To entice her as he lured her into a realm of pleasure she’d never be able to escape.
But the first taste of her drove him crazy.
He couldn’t resist. He had to have more.
His tongue plunged, his fingers working her folds to send her up higher, faster.
She gripped his shoulders, the way her nails dug into his flesh adding an erotic edge to his pleasure.
He felt her climax building before he heard her breath quicken, before the sound of her soft moans escalated. His fingers joined his tongue, stabbing and swirling.
She went over with a loud gasp.
The taste of her coating his tongue, the sound of her cries echoing in his heart, he quickly rose.
He barely remembered to grab the condom out of his pocket before he let his pants fall to the floor. In less than two seconds he had Gwen in his arms again and his mouth on hers.
He cupped her butt in his hands, squeezing rhythmically in time with their dueling tongues, then gave her a tiny lift. In sync, Gwen wrapped her legs around his hips, the spiked edge of her heels digging into his hips.
One part of his mind—the only part of his brain with a single drop of blood left—wondered at how perfectly in sync their moves were still. Three years since they’d lost themselves in each other and they still read each other perfectly.
And he was reading her well enough to know that she was about to explode.
Unable to wait any longer, he slid inside her in a smooth, easy thrust.
Then he froze.
His arms clenched, his body tightening.
It took every single, solitary degree of control he had to keep from exploding then and there.
Damn, she so hot. So wet and welcoming.
He buried his face in the curve of her throat, breathing in her spicy floral scent.
Needs and emotions poured through him at tsunami force.
He was home.
A SEAL’s Sacrifice: Chapter Five
Oh, God.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
She was still reeling from the first orgasm when Noah’s plunge sent her flying over the edge again. She could barely breathe through the sensations ripping through her body, spiraling faster and harder and stronger in tiny explosions of pleasure.
Oh, God.
Gwen’s head fell back against the softly cushioned wall, trembling as Noah drove into her again with a satisfied moan. Her hands slid over his shoulders, fingers gripping the rigid muscles before her nails skimmed down his biceps. Her hands couldn’t even wrap around the broad, rounded muscles. She squeezed but they were rock-hard. Somehow that turned her on even more, another ripple of passion spinning through her system.
This was Noah.
Here.
In her arms.
Inside her body.
He felt so good.
She shuddered, because he was so, so amazingly good.
Gwen couldn’t hold back her moan.
Hearing it, Noah plunged harder, his hands angling her higher to meet his thrusts.
She shuddered, another orgasm coiling tight and heady in her belly.
She knew she needed to stay quiet. They were having sex at his brother’s engagement party, for crying out loud.
In a public hotel.
In a freaking coat closet.
She shouldn’t be doing this.
But, oh, God, it felt so good. And she couldn’t hold back her moans. Not when he made her feel like this.
Her skin was on fire, her body filled with so many needs that she thought she’d die if they weren’t met. Needs only Noah could fill, wants only Noah could understand. In this moment, he was her whole world.
Gwen’s fingers tightened, her nails digging into the concrete hardness of his biceps as he skimmed his lips over her cheek, along her jaw. His teeth scraped a fiery trail along her throat before he buried his mouth in her neck, nibbling and sucking at the sensitive flesh just beneath her ear.
Gwen’s eyes flew open as he nipped, the pain sending hedonistic spirals of pleasure surging through her body.
She tightened her legs around his hips, her thighs gripping his body so tight that not even air could come between them. She couldn’t get enough of him. He was her dream lover, her ideal man.
He was her everything.
Gwen barely had time to compute that realization before he took her mouth again. His hands were like fire, moving over her body with a blistering heat. Inciting needs, desires, an intense craving like nothing she’d ever felt before.
Not even with him.
Suddenly terrified of the power of her cravings, sure that she was building toward heartbreak along with a wild climax, Gwen tried to regain a tenuous thread of control. But she couldn’t find a single one. All she could do was ride the waves of pleasure and trust that she wouldn’t break when she reached the end of the fall.
His tongue thrust in time with his body, sliding in and out with delicious friction. Faster and harder, harder and faster. Gwen’s trembling thighs tightened, her body tensing as her climax began uncoiling, snapping loose tiny explosions of passion.
Noah ripped his mouth from hers, burying his face in the curve of her shoulder as his fingers dug into her hips.
His
thrusts grew sharper, his moves jerky.
He plunged, hesitated, then as his teeth scraped the soft flesh of her throat, he plunged again.
“Mine,” he breathed, the word a guttural moan in her ear as he gave one last thrust before groaning his release. “You’re mine.”
The words made her whimper.
The image made her tremble.
The power of his claim sent her flying over the edge, her own body exploding with a climax so strong she saw stars explode in bright, neon colors against her tightly clenched eyelids.
The orgasm spun through her body, this one so powerful that Gwen felt like she was dying from the power of it. Everything went black, even the sparkling stars behind her eyes disappeared. A bell-like ringing filled her ears. She wasn’t even sure if she was breathing or not.
The only thing she was sure of was Noah.
He was her anchor, his body pressed tight against her, securing her to the wall so she didn’t slide into a quivering mass of melting pleasure all over his feet.
She wasn’t sure when she came back into herself.
It was a slow realization that she could feel her toes, that she could hear Noah’s still-labored breath, feel it hot against her shoulder where he’d buried his face.
Her muscles were still like water, her thighs heavy and trembling and her insides quivering with tiny aftershocks of pleasure.
It took her a few moments to identify the feeling pulsing through her system, filling her heart. Happiness. Pure, intense happiness. She hadn’t felt like this in years.
How long had her hands been rubbing small, soothing circles over the damp skin of Noah’s back? How long had they even been in here?
It seemed like it’d only been a heartbeat.
It felt like it’d been forever.
However long it’d taken, it was worth it. Because they’d been so good. So incredibly wonderful.
She felt so right in his arms.
She wanted to stay here forever.
Forever?
Gwen’s breath, already so labored that it burned her throat, disappeared. Panic clutched her belly, shoving aside all pleasure in its terrified dance. Her hands still trembled, but the shaking was fear now.
Fear that she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.
A mistake she wouldn’t be able to recover from this time. After all, how many times could a broken heart heal?
Even as the terror of those thoughts gripped her, she couldn’t bring herself to pull out of Noah’s arms. Not when she knew her time here was so short.
She didn’t realize that a single tear had slid down her cheek until the salty warmth coated her lips. Gwen pressed them tight together, breathing in deeply through her nose to try and shore up her strength.
“Why?” she asked, the word barely above a whisper.
Noah stiffened under her hands, muscles tightening against her body. She waited, but the anger she’d expected him to react with didn’t follow. Neither did he pull back to give her that charming smile of his, or try to talk her into another round of mind-numbing sex. That’s what he’d always done before when she’d tried to tiptoe around any words that might be construed as relationship talk.
Instead, he sighed. His breath danced through her hair, cooling her heated skin. The tension poured away as he pulled back to give Gwen a soft kiss.
When she saw his expression in the dim light, she realized he hadn’t ditched the tension. He’d simply handed it over to her.
“Why? Because we’re great together,” he said quietly, his fingers skimming over her face before sliding a long, damp strand of hair off her temple. “We belong together.”
Gwen’s breath disappeared.
A buzzing filled her ears and her mouth went dry.
“Belong together?” she asked, her words so faint she wasn’t sure he’d even heard her. “How?”
“Like this,” he said, proving that his hearing was just fine as he gave her butt a gentle squeeze. “We’re hot, babe. Flaming hot. Look at us. After years apart and all it takes is one look, one touch? That says something.”
It said that between them they had a volatile chemistry. One that burned hot and fast. Didn’t that make it all the more dangerous, though?
“Think about what it’ll be like in a bedroom. Or a shower,” he teased with a wicked smile that said he remembered vividly how much she liked water games. “I’ve got a few more days leave. We can spend them pleasuring each other until I’m on leave again.”
And that, she realized as her head spun, was the closest she’d ever heard to a commitment from Noah Morelli.
“What d’ya say, Gwen? You want to go out there together, to let everyone know that it’s you and me now?”
Gwen closed her eyes against the pain piercing through her heart. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to grab onto whatever he offered—anything he was willing to give—and hold tight with both hands.
She’d been in love with Noah since she was a giddy girl of seventeen. Even when he’d broken her heart, she’d still loved him. She’d learned to accept that she would love him forever.
That’s just the way it was.
So she’d waited half her life to hear Noah say he wanted her. She’d imagined it plenty of times, the words even echoed through her dreams. She’d never doubted that he liked her. They’d been friends too long for her to wonder about that. And desire? From the first time they’d gotten naked together, the heat between them had been incendiary.
But she’d spent almost four years wishing Noah would want her out of bed—or away from the wall or off the countertop—the same way he wanted her during sex.
She’d spent the last three years secretly wishing he’d come back, that he’d tell her that he wanted her more than he wanted to keep that stupid no-relationship vow. In those wishes, it’d been easy to imagine herself thrilled if he did.
Gwen trembled, trying to find the strength to breathe.
Because she wasn’t thrilled.
Instead, she was miserable.
A SEAL’s Sacrifice: Chapter Six
Gwen wondered if there was something seriously wrong with her. Or maybe it was New Year’s Eve. Could she blame all of this on the calendar?
She’d just had sex with Noah.
The man who’d walked away and broken her heart. The one she’d spent three years trying to forget.
And ten minutes after seeing him for the first time in three years, she stripped naked and rode him like a polo pony.
And loved every orgasm of it.
Now he was offering her more.
More sex.
More naked rides.
More orgasms.
How could she say no?
How could she say yes?
“Let me go,” Gwen murmured, her legs sliding down his to settle on the floor. “Please, Noah. Let me go.”
She was proud of those words. After all, she’d managed to offer them without crying or screaming.
Go her.
“Give me five minutes and we can do it all over again,” Noah teased. But from the intense look in his eyes as he searched her face, she could tell that he’d caught the edge in her voice. Either that or he was picking up on the terrified tension in her body.
But he didn’t release her.
She didn’t struggle. Not because it wouldn’t be dignified—to hell with dignity. The only reason she didn’t struggle was because she had no strength.
But when he caressed his hand over her breast and she flinched, Noah sighed and loosened his hold on her. Gwen forced her knees to lock and angled her shoulders against the wall to ensure she didn’t sink to his feet.
“We should return to the party,” she said, even though facing a roomful of people after having hot, against-the-wall sex with a man she hadn’t seen in three years held no appeal.
No, she definitely didn’t want to face that ballroom full of people. She couldn’t leave without telling Russell, who’d insist on going, too. Which would only upset
Bryanna.
As usual, Noah had left her with no choices.
“Maybe we should talk first,” Noah suggested quietly. His eyes didn’t leave her as he bent down to pick up her dress from the floor.
He’d never wanted to talk. At least not about anything that could open the dreaded door to an emotional discussion.
“You want to talk?” she asked, narrowing her eyes to peer at him through the dim light. She was so surprised that her hand froze halfway to taking her dress back. “You?”
“Don’t you think we should?”
Gwen took the dress, holding it in front of her. Not so much out of modesty but more because she was too busy staring at him to figure out how to put it on.
“We just made love in a closet,” he pointed out. His voice was calm and reasonable but the way he grabbed his pants and yanked them on was anything but. “Now you want to ignore the implications of what happened here so you can hurry out to rejoin...”
He looked away instead of finishing.
Suddenly very aware of her nudity, Gwen stepped into her dress, pulling the skirt up as quickly as she could.
“Russell.” She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment, wondering why she felt so ashamed. There was no commitment between her and Russell. Until tonight she’d thought they were just friends. But sneaking off to have sex with another man on the night her friend planned to propose was a pretty lousy thing to do.
“Russell,” Noah agreed in a heavy voice. He grabbed his shirt, but didn’t put it on. She wished he would. Even in the dim light, his chest was a temptation of epic proportions. She needed all her wits to get through this conversation but all she could think of was touching him again. “So what’s the deal? Are you seriously going to hook up with him?”
Gwen forced her lids open, meeting his gaze as she tried to figure out how to answer that. To him, and to herself. Before she could, he gestured with his shirt to indicate the closet.