A Place with Briar (Harlequin Superromance)

by Amber Leigh Williams

  A trembling sigh answered the touch of his hand on her thigh. It crept up, warm, steady, strong, lifting the hem of her gown, revealing the skin of her hip. He nipped her lower lip before trailing along her jaw to her ear. A gentle nibble of his teeth on the lobe had her melting against him, her eyes rolling back to a close.

  Her breath came in fast, shallow bursts as his fingertips coursed up the outer edge of her thigh. He touched her hip, fingered the scalloped edge of her underwear, tracing the hem around the band to her belly. His knuckles caressed the fabric just above the snug, foreign fire that blazed at the cusp of her legs.

  Her hands balled into fists at his back when he spread openmouthed kisses over her shoulder.

  “You okay?” he asked after he’d traced his way back to her mouth. “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No.” She sighed, leaning into him. Her lips parted in invitation.

  He tipped his mouth away from hers, teasing. “Thank God.” Watching her, he delved under the fabric, fingertips traveling leisurely over skin as alive with needs as the rest of her.

  As his hands wandered, she couldn’t draw a deep enough breath. The ache grew to a peak as Cole wrapped his fingers underneath the heat to daub the product of her arousal. The flush in her cheeks spread down her neck and dipped between her breasts. All the while, he watched her with deep, knowing eyes and she couldn’t breathe. His fingers turned up, parting the petals of her sex to find some sweet, explosive spot nestled underneath.

  Her head fell back in shock as he manipulated her in slow, steady strokes. A gasp launched from her mouth, her hands clutching fistfuls of his shirt. Her hips bumped the doorjamb as she moved against his caress. A fine sheen of mist had popped out onto her skin.

  He stopped as every muscle in her body seized, tightening as she loomed on the edge of a hot, stormy, turbulent sea. She stood limp, falling away from that dizzying precipice he’d held her over for one startling moment. His hands nudged the garment over her hips and let it fall to the floor. He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her, spinning around the jamb and into the bedroom.

  Setting her on the bed’s edge, he pushed the skirt of her gown up, baring both thighs. He stepped into the vee of her legs to press his denim-clad arousal to hers. Propping her hands on the bed behind her, she arched to him. His gruff groan thrilled her. She undid the remaining buttons along the front of his shirt. Answering her thirst for skin, he rolled his shoulders and shrugged free of the fabric.

  It fell to the floor and she lowered her hands, unlatching the fly of his jeans. She strained forth so she could touch her mouth to the taut, candle-licked skin of his abdomen, feel it glide underneath her lips. The sinuous wrench of arousal leading, she pressed openmouthed kisses over the heated expanse. The muscles in his jaw flared, his sinewy shoulders and rib cage rising and falling rapidly with resonant pants.

  Courage leading, she let her hands roam over the strong line of his back, tracing the lines of him down to the hips and the jeans now loose around his waist. He jerked in surprise when she moved them under the denim, molding the shape of his flank. Lifting her chin, she looked into his dark eyes as she nudged the material down and away.

  He toed the jeans off before taking her down to the mattress. The weight of him made her moan even as his hand trekked between them, over her. She lifted her knee, turning her leg out so he could circle the sweet spot he’d found before.

  He went one step further, plunging. Touching a tender kiss to her brow, he stroked the taut walls inside her. Wrapping his free arm under her waist, he pushed her up to the spinning edge again, this time refusing to back down.

  She panted as he drove her to the brink. Quivered, nails biting into his shoulder.

  “Let it go,” he murmured in a rough, roused voice. “Let go. I’m right here.”

  She plummeted on a gasp, a small cry following the choked sound. He held her to him, murmuring words of assurance as his head tilted, trailing over the smooth terrain of her throat. His lips came to rest briefly on the pulse before he nipped his way down to her collarbone.

  Urging him on, she lay her head back and cupped the nape of his neck. His lips journeyed down to the bodice of her gown. For a moment, he stopped to indulge in the spot between her breasts, nuzzling and making the muscles of her thighs shiver and burn. Her breath quavered out as he teased her nipple through the paper-thin fabric. When the hot, damp cloak of his mouth soaked through, she let out the first moan, arching against him in a surprising burst of need.

  His head lifted and she blurted, “Sorry.”

  He shook his head, lowering his lips to glide over her other breast. “Do it again.”

  The heat built and she bowed again, harder this time, fisting his hair. “Please,” she begged.

  He stopped, reared up and pulled the gown hem up, baring her inch by colorless inch. His mouth followed, first brushing over her navel then her sternum, lingering for a moment again between her breasts. Finally, she lifted her arms and he dropped to her, skin to skin.

  The heat of him seared. His kiss blazed with tension and needs yet to be fulfilled. No turning back now. She knew it. What he’d already manipulated under her skin, the charge that surged through her blood, demanded it. He knew it, she sensed as the kiss built and she began to tremble.

  Arching underneath him again, she felt the iron length of him against her inner thigh. She bent her knees and wrapped her legs around his waist, watching him as she moved beneath him. He hissed, a guttural sound stirring in his chest and vibrating through her.

  “Now,” she murmured, sliding her arms around him, too, so she enfolded him just as he’d already enfolded her.

  His hips moved against hers. As he breached, it sent a teasing electrical pulse along her nerve endings, sparking another climax. Her body went from stiff, bracing, to relaxed and she curled into him, touching her brow to his just as he had to hers at the beginning, closing her eyes to savor as he stopped, panting.

  His eyelids hovered to a half-close as if he savored the rush of being inside her. “Hold on to me,” he said. His fingers threaded through hers and he raised her arms overhead, keeping them linked and squeezing in quiet assurance. When she gripped him tight in return, he moved and they took sharp, twin pulls of air.

  Her head ascended into the clouds, but her body remained grounded, churning right along with him, falling quickly into the age-old rhythm. The heat swelled between them. The outside humidity rose from their joined forms, and friction built to an unbelievable brink as he drove her up again.

  Her legs gave out, sliding limp to the sheets, but he didn’t stop. Not when sweat trickled down the side of his face and over his rigid jaw. Not when she squealed as those cataclysmic sensations collided and washed around her again in a warm, bubbling pool. Not until every inch of him seized and he groaned, lowering his face to the curve of her neck as he shuddered and his erection kicked.

  When he, too, was spent, they both lay unmoving. Exhausted. Sated. Briar felt comfortable despite the exposure, despite the fact that he remained firmly rooted between her thighs. She lifted a hand and raked it through his mussed black hair, lips curving slowly, warmly. The afterglow eclipsed everything that had come before it. Humming. Blissful. Perfect. He was perfect, the haunted man who was so much more than a stranger to her now.

  He was her lover. With him lying close, warm, his fingers still entwined with hers against the turned-down sheet, she didn’t feel alone.

  She felt changed. Renewed. Buoyant. Loved.

  A wonderful stillness fell over her mind and she sank with him into the hazy cradle of sleep, not at all worried about tomorrow.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BRIAR USUALLY WASN’T one to pull the covers over her head and ignore the light creeping through the curtains.

  Sometime in the early morning hours the power had come back on. Air streame
d, blessedly cool, from the vents over the bed. It kissed her skin and made her smile as she roused from sleep. For once she let the clock on her bedside tick by without remorse. Cole’s upper body was curled against her back and his arms were banded around her. And there was no way she was waking him up.

  His sleeping breaths fluttered light over her ear, stirring the hair lying over the nape of her neck. The inn sounded so peaceful around them. The walls seemed to be breathing a contented sigh with the return of central cooling. The only sound she could hear was the very faint cry of seagulls returning to the battered shoreline. Other than that, she and Cole could have been alone in the world.

  Not so long ago, the silence of Hanna’s had served as a reminder of all her failures. With Cole in her bed, for once it didn’t give Briar unrest, and that dependency on him no longer gave her pause.

  She loved him, so very much. As the hour hand struck six and the first sliver of sunlight slanted through the curtains onto her face, she basked in the certainty that she could love again. That she did.

  The telephone next to the bed broke the silence, the ring jolting them both. She ran a hand over her hair, pushing herself up onto her elbow as she reached out to lift the receiver from the cradle. Cole rolled to his back, arms raised over his head. She cleared her throat and answered, “Hanna’s Inn.”

  “So, did ya get some?”

  A wide grin bloomed, along with a quiet laugh. Briar pressed her lips together, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Cole was sleeping. Lowering her voice, she said, “I’m starting to think you have a one-track mind.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Olivia replied. “No evasion. Just deets.”

  “It’s early.”

  “Like you weren’t up at the crack.”

  A hand, wide and warm, slid over her hip. She closed her eyes, melting at his touch. “I have to go.”

  “Second wind?”

  Briar rolled her eyes. “Later.” Hanging up on Olivia’s protest, she shook her head. “Sorry. I was hoping you’d sleep awhile longer.”

  “Mmm.” His hand cruised its way into the dip of her waist, right at home.

  Rolling to her back, she let his fingers splay over her bare belly. She’d fallen asleep before she could think to reach for her nightgown. Her breasts met cool air, and her arm came up automatically to shield them from view.

  He grunted a sleepy protest, threading his fingers through hers and tugging it down. Eyes still closed, he rubbed his whiskered cheek over them.

  The rasp brought out a laughing gasp. As his stubble chafed, the peaks drew up and a long tongue of melting-pot lust swept clean through her. She wriggled away. “I have to make breakfast.”

  “Mmm,” he growled again, knee rising and tugging the sheet with it. His abs looked taut even in repose and, because she knew exactly where it led, she forced herself to look away from the trim line of dark hair that disappeared under the covers. “Coffee?” he muttered.

  “That, too,” she promised, pulling her robe over her shoulders. “Rest.” After brushing her lips across his brow, she regrettably left the sexy, sleep-rumpled man in the rumpled sheets. The tantalizing image and the pinching flush on her cheeks stayed with her as she crossed from the bedroom door to the kitchenette.

  It was such a simple, everyday thing—making breakfast. But today the chore was significant. She was cooking breakfast for the man she loved. As she arranged two places at the small nook table, her eyes shifted to the windows at right and the long sweep of blue bay. The sun shined off the pinpricks of water.

  Magic, she thought. There was magic in the air this morning. The kind of magic she’d begun to doubt existed.

  Cole joined her moments later, wearing the jeans from the night before and nothing else. “Coffee’s on the burner,” she greeted, trying not to stare too much.

  He made a beeline for the counter and took a mug from a hook. “Smells good.”

  “Breakfast is cooling,” she explained. “You have impeccable timing.”

  “Mmm.” The small spoon she’d set out for stirring tinkered against the inside of his mug as he splashed in a bit of creamer. “Anybody joining us?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” she replied. “But you never know who might pop in at the last minute around here. I think it’s safe to say, though, that we’ll be dining alone today.” She glanced at him and her smile dimmed at the contemplative frown on his face. “Something wrong?”

  His head lifted from the task, his lids heavy from sleep. Despite that, his dark gaze held a conflicted glint. “I’ve never been more afraid of anything than I am of hurting you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me,” she said, thrown off track by his admission. It was just like that moment on the dock when she’d first kissed him. He’d spoken of hurting her then, too. And, like now, it had been hard to discern if he was talking about what was between them in the moment or something else. “If you don’t have enough faith in yourself, know that I have it in you.”

  “I’m not sure I deserve it.”

  She wove her arms around him and held tight. “Then I’d say you need more convincing.” Lifting herself onto her toes, she moved into his embrace, her hands sliding around his neck as she raised her mouth to his.

  She took the languid kiss deep. In reaction, he maneuvered her around until the back of her hips rested against the counter’s edge. Losing herself against him, she threaded her fingers into the hair at the back of his head.

  The afterglow shimmered over her again, a gilded, silver-edged thrill that drowned out everything else. Her tongue danced in slow cadence with his. Tilting her head into his open palm, she hummed, arousal coiling sinuously up through her, blazing in all its smoldering intensity.

  His groan echoed her sound of assent and he lowered his hands, flat and possessive over her shoulder blades, down into the dip of her spine. She gasped in savory delight as they moved between the counter’s edge to mold her flank. Instinctively, her hips bowed into his. The hard ridge of his excitement amplified hers until she was all but drowned by the need for reckless abandonment.

  As if sensing that need, he gripped the backs of her legs and raised her onto the counter.

  Dear Lord, here? On her prepping counter?

  His touch was already sliding up the skirt of her robe. Oh, thank goodness...

  He drew back abruptly, dropping his hands to the counter, trying to catch his breath. “Hell.” He lowered his head to her shoulder as he steadied himself. “I swear you make me crazy.”

  Consumed by heat, she scrubbed the heel of her hand over her hammering heart.

  After a moment, he lifted his face to hers. He rubbed his hands up her arms then down them before backing away. “We have to be more prepared before I can let this happen again.”

  She scanned his face. Suddenly, what he’d said before began to make sense. “You don’t have to worry about being prepared.” When he frowned at her, she smiled and lowered her voice. “I’ve got that covered.”

  He blinked. “Right.” Scrubbing a hand over the five o’clock shadow on his chin, he cleared his throat. “We probably should’ve talked about this before...but like I said. I lose my mind around you.”

  She grinned. “I kind of like it that way.”

  Warmth flooded his eyes as a smile softened the lower half of his face. He lowered his lips to hers, lingered for a moment as he inhaled then pulled back, taking her hand in his and interlocking their fingers. “I was thinking about taking a ride around town to see if anyone took any serious damage. Do you want to come with me?”

  “I would love that, but there’re still things for me to do around here.” Sliding her feet back to the floor, she addressed the Danish that had cooled long enough.

  “I can stay and help.”

  “No, you did more than enough yesterday. But I refuse to let you go until
you’ve had some breakfast.”

  “Trust me. I wasn’t planning on passing that up.” As she sliced and transferred pieces onto their respective plates, he leaned over her. Though he kept his hands to himself, his sexuality shimmied along her skin.

  How was she supposed to go about her day-to-day activities without taking Olivia’s advice and jumping his wicked-hot bones again...and again?

  * * *

  IT WAS OFFICIAL. Cole had lost his mind.

  From the moment he saw Briar Browning, something in him had snapped. Self-control, maybe. Or better judgment.

  His biggest fear digging into Briar’s past had been that he would lose himself. After the night he’d spent with her and the current, deluded state of his jumbled mind, it was clear that he had.

  It was hard to regret what had happened between him and Briar. Sure, upon waking he’d gone into a tailspin after recalling that there’d been no protection involved. When he’d gone up to her rooms, he hadn’t expected her to seduce him—protection had been the last thing on his mind.

  As he dressed in the bay-view suite for a ride into town, he sighed heavily. The half hour he’d spent under the stinging spray of the showerhead had done little to clear his mind. Despite all the damning details, he couldn’t get beyond the fact that last night had been incredible. Briar had blossomed beneath his touch like a bud already on the verge of bursting forth. He’d been helpless at her sweet urging to do anything but follow, to do as he’d wanted to do to her—with her—since the very beginning. To enfold. Covet.

  He’d lost his mind, it was true. Never in his life had he lost sight of his intentions so completely, so easily. Certainly not when he fell in love the first time. Not even when he’d lost everything.

  Therein lay his problem, he thought as he grabbed his helmet and keys off the dresser. He’d lost everything. His whole purpose in coming to Briar’s doorstep had been to get his life back. Now he had managed to complicate things further by damn near falling head over heels in love with Briar and forgetting that his son hung in the balance.