He’d never wanted any woman so much, never wanted anyone to the point of complete distraction like this.
Josh knew that he’d lost not just his way, but all reason, as well. All he wanted was to completely lose himself in her.
There was no beginning, no end, only her.
* * *
This was a completely new experience. Leonor had no idea that a heart could pound this hard and still not shatter into a hundred tiny pieces.
He made her feel glorious.
He made her feel ethereal, as if she was one with everything—as long as she could be one with him.
Was this what it felt like to be really, truly in love with someone? Leonor wondered. If it was, then it was wonderful, because she felt totally consumed.
This was not her first time—and yet she felt as if it was. As if everything she had ever done or experienced before this very moment was just a poor dress rehearsal, a dry run without the magic, without the exhilarating rush that now just wouldn’t stop.
This wasn’t like her.
She found herself tugging off his clothes, wanting to touch him, to glide her palms along his lean, hard body and possess him—just the exact same way that he was possessing her.
She didn’t recognize herself.
She didn’t care.
This was a completely new experience for her and she was thrilled beyond words, totally aware of how lucky she was because something like this came along once in a lifetime.
Maybe.
She only had to compare it to what she had experienced with David. At its pinnacle, lovemaking had been exciting, stirring, but never once did she have to struggle to hold on to her identity, to hold on to her very mind.
Never once had it ever seemed like an out-of-body experience the way it felt right at this moment.
Nude, wanting to arouse him the way he was arousing her, Leonor could only twist and turn beneath his mouth and his hands as shafts of lightning pierced every part of her body.
Josh was doing wondrous things to her, creating a symphony of sensations that until this very moment, she never knew she was capable of feeling.
Never even came close to dreaming it.
When he slowly forged a trail down along her quivering abdomen, deliberately moving ever lower, she bit her lower lip to keep from shouting out as a climax suddenly ripped through her body.
She didn’t know which way to turn to capture it and make it last a heartbeat longer.
But she tried.
Exhausted, the sensation slipped seductively away from her body and she finally fell back on the bed, thinking it was over, only to have him re-create the sensation and the moment all over again.
This time, she cried out his name. She could have sworn her body was all but levitating right off the very bed.
With her heart slamming against her rib cage, she struggled to catch her breath.
And then she felt Josh’s body sliding along hers. Felt herself priming in anticipation of it joining together with hers.
* * *
Astoundingly, it was just getting better and better.
Even with the guilt weighing so heavily on him, every moment he was experiencing with her was better than the last.
And all the while, the anticipation for the final union with her just kept growing.
He was a grown man, not some fourteen-year-old boy eager for his first venture into the world of sexual gratification. He shouldn’t be feeling this way.
And yet, there was no denying that he was.
And it was wonderful.
It felt like nothing else in the world mattered but this moment, this woman.
This sensation that had seized him, refusing to let him go.
Lacing his hands through hers, his eyes seeing only hers, Joshua moved her legs gently apart. And then, as he saw her catch and hold her breath, he entered her.
The next second, he felt Leonor breathe faster as her body yielded to his.
The moment they became one, he initiated another dance, one that was totally different, completely more gratifying than the one they had shared on the floor of that little club what now seemed like a hundred years ago.
The rhythm increased with every passing second.
They moved faster and faster until it was all one wild blur of a whirlwind, a race during which they held on to one another tightly as they went up the ethereal mountain that beckoned to them.
And once scaled, once they’d reached the very peak, there was only one way left open to them.
Leonor cried out his name, the sound muffled against his lips. She could actually taste his response.
Dizzy, she clung to Josh, wishing with all her heart that this euphoria that had taken possession of her would never fade.
Knowing all the while that it had to.
But she clung to him anyway. And reveled in the feel of his arms around her, the pressure of his body on top of hers.
* * *
The euphoria slid away far more quickly than he thought it would. The weight of his guilt was responsible for that. It had managed to deftly pierce the protective bubble that the aftermath of lovemaking had left behind in its wake.
Josh let out a shaky breath, doing his best to pull his wits together. Fervently hoping that she wouldn’t hate him once she found out who he was.
Rolling off Leonor, he asked, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No, why?” She turned her head to look at him. “Did I wince?”
She was teasing. She didn’t expect him to take her question seriously. But the expression on his face told her that he did.
The joyful haze she was clinging to was in serious jeopardy of breaking up like the mist on the horizon at dawn.
“No, but I thought that maybe I was too rough.”
He honestly didn’t know what had come over him. He’d never just dived off the deep end that way before. Never lost track of everything except for the woman in his arms before. It was a totally incredible experience for him—but it was the consequences of all that which had him worried now.
“Too rough?” Leonor echoed, totally mystified. That wasn’t rough; that was superb. “No, you were perfect.” Her words echoed back to her and she could feel her cheeks growing hot. “I know I’m not supposed to say something like that, but you were. I felt...wonderful,” she finally said, after mentally discarding half a dozen words trying to find the right one to describe the light show that was still going on inside of her.
Once she said it, once she had given voice to “wonderful,” she knew that there wasn’t any other word that even came close to depicting what was going on inside of her.
It was like having captured sunshine in a bottle, she thought.
She wanted to embrace the whole world. But she would “settle” for embracing him.
Shifting so that she fit against the hollow that his body formed, Leonor lightly brushed her lips against his neck, moving ever so slowly toward his throat.
Possessing every fraction of an inch that she came in contact with.
“Leonor, what are you doing?” Each word was a struggle to get out. Even his breathing had become labored. She was setting him on fire again.
How was that possible?
He would have sworn that there wasn’t anything left inside of him to rise to the occasion. But somehow, incredibly, there was.
“If you have to ask, then I’m doing this all wrong,” she murmured, her breath seductively warming his skin with each syllable.
He could feel himself getting aroused and hard all over again. Wanting her all over again.
The weight of his guilt slowly beginning to dissipate again even as he silently lectured himself to get a grip.
His lecture, admittedly halfhearted,
fell on deaf ears.
Trying to exercise some sort of control over himself, Josh propped up on his elbow and looked down into her face. He could feel his heart swelling.
“You’re not tired?” he asked.
Her smile was at once seductive and amazingly innocent.
“On the contrary, I’m invigorated,” she told him. A sultry laugh punctuated her words. Leonor slid her body in such a way that it was practically beneath his. “Want to find something to do?” she asked, a wicked grin curving her lips.
He was already sliding his hand possessively along the swell of her hips, caressing her. Reclaiming her. “What did you have in mind?”
She moved her face closer to his and breathed, “Guess.”
Laughter mingled with desire as he asked, “If I guess right, will you promise to share your vitamins with me? Because I swear you’re going to wind up wearing me out, woman.”
“I think you underestimate yourself,” she told him, moving her head just enough to capture his lips and press hers against them.
“Well, I certainly underestimated you,” he murmured against her mouth a beat before he silenced her lips with his own.
It began again, that rush, that desire, that wild, exhilarating roller-coaster ride that she had already experienced once tonight.
This time the impact was even greater, more all consuming.
Even with David, there hadn’t been this overwhelming craving, this desire to take and be taken, to make love and be made love to over and over again until there wasn’t a single breath left in her body.
Or his.
She didn’t know exactly when she’d undergone this incredible transformation; she only knew that Josh was responsible for it. Even though slivers of fear still lurked in the recesses of her mind, fear that Josh would somehow betray her and break her heart the same way that David had, Leonor ardently blocked it from her consciousness.
Dwelling instead on the wonderful way this man that fate and her own museum director had caused to cross her path made her feel.
They made love a total of three times that night and each time seemed even more fulfilling than the last because each time they did it, a sense of caring enveloped them.
As she drifted off to sleep, an incredible, seductive sense of contentment slowly slid through her veins.
If this was too good to be true—if he was too good to be true—then she didn’t want to wake up tomorrow, Leonor thought. Having experienced the perfect moment, she knew she couldn’t possibly hope for anything better, anything more.
But being human, she did.
* * *
He couldn’t sleep. Exhausted as hell, Josh still couldn’t sleep. So he finally disentangled himself from Leonor, intending to slip out of her bed and go to his own room.
Josh felt like a man trapped in a deception with no way out.
But that same feeling was why he decided to remain just where he was, at least for tonight. Because he knew that this could be the last time he would be with her like this.
So for tonight, he contented himself with watching Leonor sleep, wishing with all his heart that he hadn’t barged into her life like this. Wishing that somehow, their paths had crossed without an assignment attached to it.
Wishing with all his heart that he didn’t feel the way he did.
Because falling for an assignment was definitely frowned upon by the department, he thought.
He was a man trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place. He couldn’t tell her who he was and he couldn’t not tell her. Even if by some magical act of fate, Livia Colton turned up right here in the middle of the night and he captured her, that would change nothing between Leonor and him and he knew it.
Rock and a hard place, he thought again with a sigh.
Josh continued to watch Leonor as she went on sleeping, praying daylight would never come.
Chapter 12
Leonor stirred. Stretching, she slowly opened her eyes. The next moment, she swallowed a small cry of surprise.
Josh was in bed beside her, but that wasn’t why she’d almost cried out. Instead of being asleep, he had his head propped up on the palm of his hand and he was leaning on his elbow, watching her.
He looked as if he had been watching her for a long time.
Gathering herself together, Leonor asked a little uncertainly, “Have you been watching me like that all night?” She wasn’t quite sure what to make of having someone just observing her sleep like this.
“Pretty much,” Josh admitted. And then he shrugged carelessly. “I had trouble sleeping.”
Having Livia Colton as a mother had done a number on her confidence. In moments of weakness, she tended to take on blame. “I’m sorry, did I keep you awake? Was I tossing from side to side?”
He shook his head ever so slightly, just the tiniest hint of a smile touching his lips.
“Actually, you sleep very still. I kept checking to see if you were breathing.” He hadn’t really, but he grasped at the excuse, thinking she might find it acceptable as to what was really keeping him awake like this.
“Well, I guess it’s better than snoring,” she commented, still feeling a little self-conscious about waking up to find Josh just staring at her. “Maybe you’ll sleep better in your own room.”
His smile grew a little wider. “Are you kicking me out?” Josh asked, amused.
“No,” she cried, not wanting him to misunderstand and think that she had absolutely any regrets about what had happened between them last night. “I was just thinking that maybe you would sleep better alone—a lot of people do, from what I’ve read,” she interjected. “Besides, you can’t go a whole night without sleep. You’ll feel like a zombie if you do that.”
She was concerned about him—and he was spying on her. His guilt just kept getting larger and larger as it gnawed away at him, he thought ruefully.
“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “Haven’t you heard of pulling an all-nighter?”
The smile crept across her lips slowly, curving the corners of her mouth as it went. He found it hopelessly seductive—and told himself not to.
“We nearly did,” Leonor pointed out.
He needed to clear his head—before he gave in and made love with her again, guilt or no guilt.
“Tell you what,” he suggested briskly, “let me grab a quick change of clothes and I’ll meet you in the lobby, say in about half an hour, and we’ll go out for breakfast.”
“Make it an hour. I need to freshen up,” she told him. Leonor sat up, pulling the sheet up with her.
“No, you don’t,” Josh contradicted. He was trying very hard just to look at her face and not the sagging sheet that was revealing far more than it hid. “You look perfect just the way you are.”
“An hour,” she emphasized with an amused smile.
“An hour,” he agreed.
Giving her a quick kiss—anything more and he knew he was not going to leave—Josh scooped up his clothes and hurriedly got dressed.
He was doing his best to avoid eye contact, but he could still feel her eyes on him.
“You know,” he told Leonor, “it’s not polite to stare.”
“Oh, was I staring?” she asked in an innocent voice that wouldn’t have fooled a two-year-old. “I wasn’t aware that I was doing that.”
“You were,” he assured her with a knowing look.
“I’ll just have to try to get that under control,” she told him.
He stole another quick kiss. Damn, but he wanted her, he thought, struggling with himself.
“You do that,” he told her just before he left her suite.
Leonor slid back down in the bed, content to absorb what was left of the heat that Josh’s body had generated and left behind.
She was in no hurry to get up. At least, not yet.
* * *
Josh’s room was located on the floor above Leonor’s. Rather than wait for the elevator, he went to the stairs and took them two at a time.
He entered this room just in time to hear his cell phone ringing, the one he didn’t take with him when he was with Leonor.
He didn’t have to look at the screen to know who was calling.
“Any progress?” the deep voice on the other end ground out without any preamble.
Josh sat down on the bed before answering. “I’m beginning to think that we were all wrong about Livia’s oldest daughter.”
“Oh?” The tone told him that his boss was not of like mind.
“I don’t think that Leonor Colton had anything to do with her mother’s prison escape and frankly—” he paused for a moment, wondering if he was making a mistake, telling Arroyo this “I’m not feeling too good about this deception.”
As he could have predicted, his superior was not sympathetic.
“Well, suck it up, Howard. If I wanted a choirboy for this assignment, I would have brought one in. Your job is to nail this woman and get her to tell you where her mother’s holed up. And spend as little money as you can doing it,” he tossed in as a reminder.
That had sounded all well and good on paper, but now that he had gotten to know Leonor, he wasn’t so sure anymore. “What if Leonor Colton doesn’t know where she is?”
“She knows,” Arroyo assured him confidently. “This kind of thing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Now get back in there and find out what the woman knows. That’s an order, Howard.”
And with that, Arroyo abruptly terminated the call.
Josh curbed the sudden temptation to throw the cell phone across the room. But breaking it and temporarily disabling his communications with Arroyo wouldn’t solve anything. He put it back into the rear of the third dresser drawer, then covered it with his socks and underwear.
Showering quickly, he dressed and was downstairs in the lobby in under the hour that they had agreed on.
So was Leonor.
She surprised him.
She was sitting in one of the chairs in the lobby, waiting for him. Her red hair was loose about her shoulders and he could have sworn that, like a siren song, it was calling to him, coaxing him to slip his fingers in and pull her to him so he could kiss her.
Colton Undercover Page 12