by Cat Johnson
Once again she felt his assessing stare, though he said nothing as he kept running his fingers in and around and under the string on her hips in a way that seriously hampered her thinking ability.
“Did you hear me?” Her breath was soughing in and out of her lungs now, and since he was holding her, it wasn’t from the effort of remaining above water.
“I heard you.” He towed her closer to shore so she could stand. “Before you drown. So did your own personal insurance company beg you to change jobs, or what?”
That sounded like amusement in his voice now, and she set her jaw in annoyance. “I just thought you’d like to know.”
“What you do for a living is no longer my concern, as proven by the papers you sent to me.”
She’d sent the divorce papers out of hurt, not that she’d tell him so. “I figured you might be in a hurry to get rid of me.”
“Why would you figure that?”
“Because your brother told me you were dating again.” Just the thought left her cold. Terrified. “He said you needed a date for some charity event.”
He sighed. “Cooper has a big mouth.”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s protecting you. And anyway, what you do is your own concern now, right?” she asked, tossing his words back at him.
“Ella—”
“It’s okay, James.” She shrugged in the water, the motion bringing her breasts in direct contact with his broad, wet chest. Because that hit her with a jolt like an electric shock, she began to turn away, wanting to hide the madness that overtook her whenever she thought about him touching someone else, kissing someone else, loving someone else.
It haunted her. He was a sexual man, demanding, earthy, rawly sensual, and she couldn’t imagine he’d really gone six months without—
“Oh no, you don’t.” Grabbing her arms in his big hands, he whipped her around in the water, frustration written all over his face. “I hate this,” he ground out. “Hate the doubts, the anger, the fear—”
“James—”
“You’re standing there picturing me with someone else. I know it because I’m doing the same thing and it’s killing me. Killing me, Ella.”
“I haven’t—”
“I haven’t, either, damn it. God, I hate this, hate all of it, especially the missing you.” He gave her a little shake, then hauled her up against him. “So you know what? The hell with that part, at least.”
And he covered her mouth with his.
She had exactly one coherent thought: Yum. Then her every brain cell checked out, replaced by pleasure cells, of which he hit them all.
It amazed her. One second they were standing there in the ocean, the water pummeling them, staring at each other with all the pent-up emotion and exhilaration that was never far from the surface with them, and the next his mouth opened on hers, making her whimper with a carnal need so powerful it shook her to the core, taking away all rhyme and reason.
Then he pulled back and stared at her, water dripping into his face, eyes dark and hot.
Her own heart was drumming so hard and heavy she could hear nothing but the blood roaring through her ears.
“I can’t do this again, El,” he said. “But I can’t not, either.” And he came at her again.
Chapter Five
He tasted the same, Ella thought dazedly, like heaven on earth, and in the water as they were, their bodies being gently battered by the rise and fall of the swelling waves, she pressed closer.
At her movement, James groaned, low and throaty, and then he was inside, his tongue tangling with hers, his taste hot and sweet and so right she felt her eyes sting as she opened to him with a low murmur of acquiescence.
He shifted in the water so that she was flush to him, her breasts mashed to his chest, her soft, giving belly pressed to his hard, ridged one, her legs entangled with his. She’d always loved the way she felt so small and protected in his embrace, and that hadn’t changed. Neither had the fact that he could still thoroughly ravish her mouth with a skill that rendered her completely witless.
And only when he’d accomplished that did he rip his mouth from hers. “God, El. You feel so good.” This was punctuated by hot, little, biting kisses along her jaw to her ear, which he nibbled while breathing with thrilling unevenness, all of which combined to make her eyes cross with stabbing lust.
“I can’t stand anymore,” she gasped.
“Here.” He lifted her up. “Wrap your legs around me. There. Oh yeah, like that. I can’t get enough of you,” he muttered as a wave washed around them, lifting them up and then down on the endless tide. “Just can’t.” Holding her head still with one hand fisted in her hair, his other slid down her spine and into her bikini bottoms, squeezing, molding, pressing her against his shorts, thin and wet now, hiding nothing, especially not the hot, pulsing erection nudging between her thighs.
“More,” he growled, palming one butt cheek and then the other before dipping his fingers between and exploring there.
“James—”
He cut her off with his lips and teeth and tongue, coming at her hard and fierce, still holding her head in place as if afraid she’d pull away.
Fat chance. She couldn’t get enough, either. Slippery strands of her hair caught in the stubble on his jaw, stabbed into her eyes, clung to their shoulders, releasing the scent of her shampoo in the air along with the tangy salt from the ocean spray.
Inhaling her as if he wanted to gobble her up whole, James sank his teeth into her earlobe and pulled lightly as he exhaled slowly, raising a delicious set of goose bumps along her flesh. Lifting his head, still holding hers, he stared down into her eyes, then at her lips. When she licked them to get the last taste of him, he groaned.
All while his fingers gripped her bottom hard, grinding her against him, his hips moving, moving, moving, in a slow, snug, rocking motion that had her whimpering in helpless delight, gasping, sobbing for breath as she squirmed to get even closer. Her skin felt too tight, her heart too full as he drove her toward climax with nothing more than those maddening, increasing oscillations of his hips.
When he pulled back for air, breathing fast and shallow, Ella nearly died. No stopping! She moaned low, a protest deep in her throat, and slid her fingers into his hair, trying to bring his mouth back to hers. Her hips were still rocking, her heart still pumping, her nipples had shrunk to painful, tight little ball bearings that ached, ached for his attention. Between her legs she felt hot and desperate, and with him holding her open, spread to his rocking hips, his erection within easy access of every critical nerve ending she owned, she couldn’t stop, just couldn’t stop.
“James.” The word was a mere whimper, dark and disturbingly needy, and in another time and place she might have spared the time to be horrified to hear herself begging, but not now. Now she needed him, hard and pulsing, needed him to tear away her bikini bottoms and his shorts, needed him thrusting into her, taking her over the edge, now, now, now. “Please . . .”
“Yeah, I’ll please.” He rasped a thumb back and forth over her nipple, then drew his hand down her belly to do the same over her bikini-covered sex, outlining her in slow precision.
“Ohmigod.”
“Here, Ella? Now?”
“Here,” she panted. “Now.”
He dragged her out of the ocean. She thought maybe he intended to take her inside the cottage, but apparently it was too far away because the moment their calves were free of the water, he sank to his knees and brought her down with him.
Their hands fumbled for purchase, hers skimming over his glorious body, touching his shoulders, his flat belly, his thighs . . . between them.
His were no less desperate, his fingers spread wide as if to touch all that he could with every sweep of his hands.
She tugged down his wet, clinging shorts.
He bit her shoulder.
She licked his Adam’s apple.
He growled and tumbled her all the way down to the sand, spreading her legs and making him
self at home between them, cupping her bottom and pulling her forward in a quick, hard movement that settled her more completely against his straining erection before he covered her body with his and kissed her, hard and wet and deep. She tried to get her hands between them, to draw him inside her, but he manacled her hands in one of his and drew them up over her head. Towering over her, he stared down at her. “You’re not going to rush me. Not after six months of this, getting hard at the mere thought of you beneath me like this.”
Then he sank his fingers into her hair, drawing her head back, forcing her to arch beneath him so that he could drag his mouth down her throat toward the curve of a breast. His handling of her was presumptuous and aggressive and she didn’t care. She knew what he could offer her, knew how far he could take her, which was further than anyone had ever taken her before. And she wanted to go there, now.
Water and sand swirled around them in the dark, dark night as he tugged her bikini top off and tossed it aside before dipping his head and capturing her nipple in his mouth, lashing the tender tip with his tongue.
Stars burst in her vision, but she had no idea if they were the real ones hanging in the sky above them or only manufactured in her head from what he was doing to her as she cupped his head in her hands and held him to her.
Water lapped at their feet with each wave. She loved the weight of him, thrilled to the way he thrust a thigh between hers, spreading her, holding her open as he lifted his head and blew hot breath over her wet nipple. “I missed the taste of you here,” he said.
“Keep tasting, then.”
Curling the fingers of one hand around the bikini tie on her hip, he tugged until the wet, stretchy material popped free. Then he was scraping the bikini bottoms off her. “I missed the taste of you everywhere.” His knuckles brushed her trimmed pubic hair, the very tips of his fingers just barely skimming over her folds as he kissed his way past her belly button. “But I especially missed the taste of you right”—he nipped at her inner thigh, brushed his nose over the center of her and then kissed her—“here.”
Ella gasped and tightened her grip on his hair.
“Mmm.” He kissed her again, using his tongue this time to circle her clit, and her entire body bowed, tightened. She was going to come, thank God, but then he pulled back a fraction of an inch, and she dug her fingers into his shoulders. “James.”
“Still here. God, El.” He nipped at her other inner thigh again, then a little higher, moving tantalizingly close to where she throbbed for him, for release—
Yes.
But the man only danced his tongue over her, moving half an inch to the right. Frustrated beyond speech, she gripped his hair tight and tried to direct his head.
“Easy,” he murmured as a wave teased just past their knees.
Easy? She’d give him easy! Again she gripped his hair and shifted his head and felt a puff of air in the right spot.
He was chuckling. Bastard. Rat bastard. “Goddammit, James, do me!”
“I intend to. My way.” He took her with his mouth then, by turns soft and gentle, demanding and aggressive, and yet when she was a quivering, desperate mass—which took all of two minutes—he pulled back again. “Anyone else ever make you feel this way?” he murmured, nudging her legs even wider with his shoulders, cupping her bottom in his big hands, making himself at home while she let out urgently needy, panting sobs. “Ella?”
“No one,” she admitted in a strangled voice, crying out when he finally sucked her into his mouth, his own uneven pants against her captive flesh sending her even further onto the edge. “No one,” she managed to say. “But you.”
He rewarded her by moving to the preciously correct spot, unerringly laving at her with his tongue in the rhythm he knew she needed. Each heartbeat, each breath, shoved her closer to the unrelenting, building heat threatening to consume her, and she went willingly. Her fingers slid out of his hair and went to his shoulders, roped with lean muscle as he bent to his task. Her skin tightened, her muscles began to shake.
“Mmmm,” he murmured, lapping her up like cream, sliding two fingers deep inside her, stroking her both inside and out now, in a way she couldn’t have resisted if she’d tried.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop,” she panted as water lapped at their lower bodies.
“I won’t,” he promised, and then she was coming, bursting apart at the seams really, with the water hitting her at mid-leg now, the dark night sky drifting over them, and James doing as he promised, not stopping, licking her more softly now as he held her frantic hips, slowly bringing her back to earth.
Her hands fell to the wet sand at her sides as she fought to catch her breath. “My God. What was that, a hurricane?”
His hair brushed over her as he turned his head and kissed her inner thigh. “Hurricane James.”
She laughed breathlessly. “F-5 strength. I think I have sand in all my parts,” she said, but then the laughter caught in her throat because James surged up to his knees, gripped her hips in his hands, and stared down at her with burning eyes.
“I have something else to fill you with,” he said, and in one smooth, controlled thrust, buried himself to the hilt.
Her pleasure-filled cry comingled with his. Wrapping both her arms and legs around him, she tipped her mouth up for his crushing kiss as he began to move. Water continued to lap at their feet and calves, the sand warm and giving beneath them. The light hair on James’s chest teased her nipples as he stroked her smooth and sure, then harder, grazing her already sensitized, wet flesh with each flex of his hips.
Then he tore his mouth from hers and lifted her hips higher for the thrusts she couldn’t get enough of. The breath plowing in and out of her lungs, she felt her body tighten again, but she struggled to hold back, to wait for him.
“No, you don’t,” he growled, and spread the fingers of the hand on her hip so that he could glide his thumb over her clit.
She exploded again, from an even deeper, darker place than she had before, and even as she let go and cried out his name, she knew. God, she knew.
She was still hopelessly, helplessly in love with him.
When she came back to herself she realized he was still hard as iron inside her, holding himself rigid. He hadn’t come. She ran her hands down the taut, damp, quivering muscles of his back.
“Don’t,” he choked out. “Don’t move, don’t touch.”
“But—”
“Don’t talk, either.” He buried his face in her hair and took several long, gulping, deep breaths before speaking in a tight, guttural voice. “I don’t have a condom.”
He was barely clinging to control, and a burst of warmth and affection for him nearly overcame her, so much so she could hardly breathe. “But I do.”
He lifted his head, his eyes black and glittering.
“In my purse,” she said.
They both craned their necks and stared at the little beach cottage, a good hundred yards away.
“Fuck,” he said tightly.
“We can do that,” she said coyly.
He met her gaze, his unwavering and no-holds-barred dark and hungry. And not playful, not at the moment. “One condom isn’t going to cut it,” he growled. “Not tonight.”
Good thing she was flat on her back because her knees went rubbery at his thrillingly rough tone. “Then we’ll have to get creative, won’t we?”
With a groan, he rolled off her to his back and tossed his arm over his eyes. “You’re going to kill me. Give me a second.” His chest rose and fell rapidly as she watched him fight for control. A fascinating sport.
And arousing. His chest, defined and delineated with lean, hard muscles, heaved with each breath, his flat, ridged belly quivering. She straddled him, murmured “Shh” at his low, tortured groan, and slid down that delicious body. “Let me get started on that creativity,” she murmured, and ran her tongue up the length of his rock-hard penis, swirling it over the tip.
James groaned raggedly, struggling with that control s
he always admired but wanted no part of at the moment. She wanted him to lose it. Wanted to watch. Just as he’d watched her. And she had the advantage of knowing that this act was one of his favorites, guaranteed to take him over the edge. She licked him again, then raised her head and surveyed him, sprawled out before her, back bowed, body drawn tight as an arrow, his face a mask of both pleasure and pain. “Want me to stop?” she asked softly.
“No.” His head thunked back on the sand as his fingers tunneled into her hair, clutching her head. “God, no.”
Chapter Six
Afterward, they staggered through the dark, balmy night toward the small cottage like a pair of drunks. Drunk on lust, James thought, grabbing Ella’s hand before she could fall over as she tripped over her own feet yet again.
She collapsed against his chest with a muffled snort of laughter, and just like that, with her hair up his nose and her naked, warm, damp body sliding against his, his heart melted.
Maybe not just lust.
She curled into him and somehow he found the strength to hoist her up.
“Mmm,” she murmured, burying her face in his throat and inhaling deeply as if she loved the smell of him. “I love it when you do the he-man thing.”
“No, you don’t.” He looked down at her in his arms and laughed. “You hate it when I try to protect you.”
Her eyes were clear of amusement now, gleaming in the night and full of things that made him reel. “Maybe I’ve changed.”
He wasn’t sure how to take that as he nudged open the front door with his shoulder and dropped her down on the couch, lit only by the slant of moonbeams coming through the blinds. Nor was he sure what she wanted when she reached up and tugged him down over the top of her.
Her kisses, as she rained them over whatever part of him she could reach, were greedy, her hands demanding, and she urged him close, touching everything she could.