Intimate Strangers

by Laura Taylor

  "Hannah…" He felt shamed and humbled by her honesty and her willingness to make herself vulnerable so that he would understand her feelings.

  "Please, let me finish."

  He nodded.

  "Leaving you will be the hardest thing I ever do, Nicholas, and I’m just selfish enough to want a little more time with you. I need…" The emotions roiling inside her made her pause and blink back tears. "I need all the memories I can have of us."

  Guilt spiked within him like a high fever, but he made himself remind her, "We’ve both known from the beginning that your stay here was temporary."

  "That doesn’t mean I have to like it one damn bit!" she snapped, some of her old fighting spirit apparent as she glared up at him, tears spilling from her eyes.

  His own gaze cooled to resemble glacial ice, his hard jaw reminiscent of an outcropping of solid granite. "You have responsibilities. So do I."

  Hannah stiffened in his arms, but she didn’t move away from him. "You don’t have to remind me that I’m an outsider. I just wish we could find some kind of a compromise that would allow us to…"

  "We can’t," he cut in, unwilling to allow either one of them to hope for or to expect anything more than what they could have in this moment. Only normal people had even half a prayer of sustaining a loving relationship, and he couldn’t offer her anything even remotely normal. Their situation was impossible, and he didn’t expect it to change.

  Hannah behaved as though she hadn’t heard his words or his implacable tone of voice. She flattened her palms against his chest, slipped her hands up and around his neck, and tugged his head down.

  His heart shifted painfully in his chest as he looked down into her heart–shaped face. The thought of never seeing her or holding her or making love to her again seemed like the worst torture imaginable—the kind of torture capable of permanently maiming his soul.

  "Make love to me, Nicholas. Make me feel as though I really belong in your life just a little while longer. Make me believe that I belong to you, even if it’s just a fantasy."

  All of his defenses crashed in on him. He stopped fighting, stopped resisting, and stopped trying to sidestep the need that blazed like an inferno in his soul. He jerked her up and into his arms with a muttered curse and carried her out of the kitchen. He strode across the ground floor level of his home and then took the stairs to the master bedroom suite three at a time, his booted footsteps echoing in the silence.

  Pausing beside his bed, he lowered Hannah to a position in front of him, his hands shifting to his belt buckle the instant he released her. They kept their eyes fastened on each other as they hastily shed their clothing.

  Breathing rapidly, Hannah stared up at the hard planes of his face as she discarded the final barriers to closeness with Nicholas. She unhooked her bra and let it drop to the floor. Then, she shimmied free of her panties, feeling them slide down her legs, and then kicked them aside. His gaze, so cold and unemotional just minutes ago, now flared with sensual intent.

  She shivered beneath the heat of it, but she didn’t make any attempt to cover her nakedness. She knew her love for him shone in her eyes. She needed him to see the true depth of her feelings for him, wanted him to finally grasp that she would be anything he needed her to be and give him everything he demanded of her.

  Anticipation made her breathless, but her desire for him strengthened her ability to display her nakedness without trying to shield herself with any gestures of false modesty. She saw his appreciation as his eyes skimmed over her. She arched slightly when she felt her nipples tighten into hard buds. His eyes lingered and stroked her with an invisible caress.

  Her insides clenched, and her breasts felt heavy and swollen. She nearly begged him to touch them, to fondle them with his callused hands and long, narrow fingers, but she couldn’t speak. All her of emotions felt wedged in her throat.

  He brought his hands up to cup her face. A muscle ticked in his jaw. "I still can’t quite believe you’re real," he admitted, his voice sounding raw and ravaged as he spoke. "And I don’t understand how you can want someone like me."

  She almost admitted to him that she was in love with him. Instead, she smiled gently and reached for his hands, guiding them to her breasts, offering herself to him with a simplicity that was both innocent and seductive. Her eyes fluttered closed as his hands closed over her flesh, and air hissed as she sucked it into her lungs.

  She felt the spasm of his fingers as he cupped her breasts with a possessiveness she adored. She stood there, vulnerable to his gaze and his touch, giving herself to him with an innate honesty that seemed to baffle this powerful man. She welcomed the erotic images that flashed through her mind like a thousand brightly lighted neon signs.

  "Make the world go away, Nicholas." Her voice broke as she said his name. She felt exposed, and as terrified of facing the future without him as she was eager for what they could share now.

  He drew her into his heat and hardness, molding her soft curves to the muscles that ridged the front of his torso and thighs. He swept his hands down her back, his fingertips tracing the faint indentation of her spine before he curved them over her hips and tucked her between his parted legs. His sex throbbed against her belly, warning her with a lack of subtlety of the power of his need and branding her for all eternity as his.

  She tried to edge even closer to Nicholas. Hungry for the intimacy that would make them one, she savored his strength and derived satisfaction from the realization that he needed her as much as she needed him. She wanted him to claim her, needed him to possess her, felt an almost desperate desire to be the recipient of his love, but she cast aside that latter craving. She sensed that he would never admit to loving a woman even if he felt the emotion. It was not Nicholas Benteen’s way to chain anyone to him.

  She respected him for understanding that love could never be managed or manipulated or trapped. Still, she wished for the words, even though she’d vowed to never ask anything of him that he wasn’t prepared to offer freely. She sighed, shaking herself free of her troubling thoughts.

  She reached out to touch him, the sensation of stroking hot, forged steel penetrating her senses as she snaked her arms around his narrow waist and flattened her palms against his lower back. Muscles rippled beneath her fingertips, the surface of his skin scorching her breasts, belly, and thighs in a slow, tantalizing burn. She shifted her hands lower, bracketing his narrow hips with her palms, feeling the tension of flexing muscles before she ventured lower still to the backs of his powerful, hair–roughened thighs.

  The pulsing strength of his hard shaft trapped against her belly promised ecstasy and more. She undulated against him like a slender reed that had been rocked by an unexpected breeze. She quivered beneath his hands when he skimmed his fingertips over her hips and down into the dark cleft that shielded her secrets. He lingered there, touching her intimately, devastating her, tantalizing her with a silent promise of pleasures yet to come.

  As he caressed the silken folds of her sex, she felt her insides melt into steaming rivers of heated sensation. Hannah rocked forward, her pelvis tilting upward in a suggestive and very elemental invitation. Her nipples tightened, the ache in them so intense, she thought she might die if he didn’t take them into his mouth.

  Nicholas didn’t disappoint her. He seized her by the waist, lifted her up so that her breasts were level with his mouth, and flicked his tongue over her sensitive flesh. She gripped his shoulders, her nails biting into his flesh, circled his waist with her legs, and groaned his name.

  He suckled at her breasts until she lost all awareness of time and space. He alternated back and forth, relentless as he took each hard peak deep into the wet heat of his mouth, and he drove her to tension–filled heights that she’d only ever imagined.

  When he abruptly lowered her to her feet, her knees buckled, but he caught her in time. Turning, he tumbled her back across the bed, coming down atop her. She welcomed his weight as he settled between her thighs.

 
; Hannah tasted his heat and his passion as he claimed her mouth, his tongue thrusting repeatedly past her lips. She experienced the depth of his desire as he tugged at her nipples with skillful, tormenting fingers, and she trembled with a kind of desperate hunger that made her insides quicken with restless, relentless currents of liquid fire. Shaking with need, she eagerly reached out to him with encompassing arms, searching, stroking fingers, and an equally ravenous mouth.

  When Nicholas dipped a finger into the hot, wet core of her body, she came up off of the bed with a soul–shattering cry. A heartbeat later, she splintered beneath his seductive touch, her delicate inner muscles violently tremoring and shudder after shudder ripping through her until she could barely draw breath. He soothed her with gentle hands, offering what she soon realized was but a brief respite before the next storm.

  He aroused her yet again, but this time he began slowly. He lulled her into the sweetest ecstasy with lips and tongue that glided over the undersides of her full breasts, past her narrow midriff, and across her stomach until he reached the temptation at the juncture of her restlessly shifting thighs.

  He covered her tender flesh with his mouth, drinking from her the essence of what made her a woman. He sipped gently at first, allowing her to accustom herself to the sensations spiraling hot and wild through her trembling body, but soon he began to stroke her with the tip of his tongue. As she tightened into herself, he caged her hips with his hands and suckled the swollen nub that crowned her sex.

  Hannah cried out, arching into the erotic intimacy of the moment. He tortured her, but it was a glorious form of torture. She felt undone by the pleasure hammering at her senses. Her mind emptied of everything but the sensual purity of what they now shared.

  Desperate to have him buried deep within the heart of her passion, she gasped, "Now, Nicholas. I need you now."

  Disoriented when he suddenly brought her upright, she didn’t resist him as he drew her into his lap and positioned her atop his strong thighs. She circled his hips with her legs, cheeks flushed and lips parted as she tried to catch her breath. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she inched closer. She possessed one goal and the single–minded determination to achieve it.

  He gripped her waist with both hands and stopped her, which earned him a bewildered look from Hannah. His chest rose and fell rapidly. His hands shook. Despite the inarticulate sound of frustration that escaped her, he gave himself time to regain some measure of control.

  Nicholas felt the almost violent edge to his arousal. His need of Hannah was so intense, he feared he might harm her. She’d reawakened the emotional starvation he’d suffered from for most of his life. And now she’d forced him with her generosity and sensuality to confront the reality of losing his infamous self–control, something he hadn’t ever done with a woman.

  But Hannah Cassidy was not just any woman. She was his woman, the same woman who now resided within his soul, the same woman who owned his heart. He struggled to control his physical hunger, not simply his longing to make her a permanent part of his life.

  She searched his face for some hint of his state of mind as she lowered her hands and closed them around the silk–covered steel of his sex. Nicholas jerked beneath her touch, and then he dragged air into his burning lungs. She stroked him, measuring his length and thickness with gentle hands and something akin to amazement in her beautiful eyes.

  When she could speak, she asked, "Why are we waiting?"

  He closed his eyes, shuddering as his flesh surged and throbbed beneath her caressing fingers.

  "I need you too much right now." Once he opened his eyes, his troubled gaze grazed her face. "I’m afraid I’ll hurt you."

  Hannah pressed a tender kiss to his lips, and then traced them with the tip of her tongue. "You couldn’t hurt me, not ever. I want all of you, Nicholas, even the dark side that worries you so much." She shifted forward, and then she flashed him a sexy womanly smile as their loins touched in a uniquely sensual kiss. "I promise you, I won’t break. I was created to share this with you. Haven’t you realized that yet?"

  "You’re playing with fire," he cautioned, his voice a rough rumble of barely suppressed aggression.

  "I want your fire inside of me," she breathed against his lips. "Now, Nicholas. Now."

  She surged forward without warning, impaling herself with a sudden sharp movement of her hips that rocked them both. She eagerly sheathed his hard length within the dark, humid depths of her body, a fiercely determined expression on her face. She immediately experienced the pulsating power of his erection, feeling as if he’d breached her heart with his penetration.

  Hannah trembled as she rested her forehead against his chin. "You’re like fire inside me. I’m burning alive, and I love it."

  He shuddered beneath the exotic feel of her body consuming his, trembling around him. He felt his control start to unravel. "Look at me," he ordered.

  That now familiar sound of ground glass in his voice prompted her to tilt her head back and meet his gaze. The strain in his features was obvious.

  "I need you, Nicholas. I think I always will."

  He moved with fluid grace, keeping their bodies joined while he shifted her onto her back across the bed. Hovering over her, he drove his fingers into her dense, dark hair, cradled her head, and stilled the restless movement of her body with the press of his hips.

  He pressed forward, slowly at first. His conscience demanded that he test the tolerance and resilience of her much smaller form before he allowed his control to slip.

  Wrapping her arms around him, Hannah followed his lead. Each powerful stroke, each dip of his hard flesh into her body felt deeper and more intense than the one before. Waves of sensation rippled outward from the center of her body.

  She trembled, her gaze locked onto his steel–colored eyes—eyes that gleamed with an emotion she couldn’t quite label in the midst of the emotions that stormed through her. His face, all hard bone and even harder angles, and his piercing eyes, made her feel as though some wildly sensual beast had claimed her for his own.

  The steadily escalating pace he set quickly stripped her of the ability to think or reason. She surrendered totally to Nicholas, declaring her love for him with the answering passion of her body. Although he sensed some profound change in Hannah’s response, he failed to identify it as he succumbed to the exquisite pleasure he found within her intimate embrace.

  Eyes riveted on each other, they matched each other stroke for stroke. Hannah clung to him as he increased their pace, and she met his sharp, deep thrusts with the sudden up–tilt of her pelvis each time he buried himself to the hilt.

  "What do you feel?" Nicholas demanded through gritted teeth as her sleekly seductive heat quivered and quaked around him.

  "Everything!" she gasped in response.

  She writhed beneath him, inciting an array of emotions and sensations that blazed into his bloodstream like burning comets.

  "Love me, Hannah. Love me." He swept her back into the whirling vortex of their lovemaking once more.

  He became her focus, her turbulent universe. Nothing and no one existed for her as she circled his hips with her long, slim legs and gloried in the hammering force of his thrusts.

  Their bodies collided again and again, recklessly unbridled passion and a thousand unvoiced emotions flowing between them as they made their way to a sensual summit that defied description.

  Her release suddenly exploded across the dual landscapes of her mind and body. She felt utterly helpless, awash in a molten flow of stunning sensations. She stiffened, and then she felt as if she were tumbling through space in a seemingly endless free fall.

  At the mercy of Hannah’s climax, Nicholas lost control just moments later. The milking tremors of her body and the sound of her voice as she cried out his name catapulted him into a sensory oblivion that consumed and devastated him.

  Much later, he cradled her in his arms, watching over her as she slept. And in the hours that followed, Nicholas Benteen gave up
his efforts to convince himself that he would be able to go on without her once she departed Nevada. He simply couldn’t lie to himself any longer.

  10

  Their sensual idyll ended forty–eight hours after their return from Sean’s empty cabin when Hannah’s cell phone rang.

  She glanced at Nicholas as she put the finishing touches on their lunch. "Would you grab that for me? It’s probably Sarah."

  He answered it before the third ring tone sounded. He spoke to the caller while Hannah placed a platter of sandwiches on the kitchen table, quickly rinsed her hands at the kitchen sink, and filled two mugs with coffee.

  Nicholas grinned as he handed the phone to her in exchange for one of the mugs. "Your younger sister wants to speak to you."

  "Hi, Sarah." Hannah laughed and then covered the receiver. "She says you have a voice to die for." Returning to the call, she scolded thirty seconds later, "You’ve got a really dirty mind even for a cop."

  Nicholas arched an eyebrow as he slouched negligently against the edge of the kitchen counter and drank his coffee. Clad in faded jeans that hugged his powerful lower body like a second skin, a heavy cable knit sweater, and boots, he looked more dangerously sexy than usual to Hannah.

  "From the expression on his face, that’s not exactly a news flash." She smiled at something her sister said. "No, you cannot add him to your list of prospective husbands." Hannah favored him with a thoroughly covetous look. "He’s already taken."

  She listened for a few moments, her smile widening to a grin. "I’m absolutely sure he’s not available."

  Despite his relaxed posture and contented expression, Nicholas sensed that Hannah’s phone conversation wouldn’t end pleasantly. Although she’d made phone calls to various family members for updates on her mother’s medical condition during her stay with him, she hadn’t received any from them until now. He watched her grin fade to a sober expression as she listened to her sister.

  "When?" she asked. "I don’t know if I can get home that quickly, but I’ll try." She paused. "I’ll check my email for the airline information. Thanks for checking the schedule for me. I’ll try to get a reservation, and I’ll use the shuttle service once my flight lands."