by JoAnn Ross
She sighed her pleasure. “Mine, too.”
He continued to kiss her lovingly, lingeringly, until Molly’s entire world became focused on his mouth. She’d never known it was possible to feel so much from just kissing. She’d never realized a kiss could make you fly.
After a time, he took her hands from around his neck and placed them against the front of his shirt. “I think we’re wearing too many clothes.”
She felt his heart pounding beneath her fingertips in a hard, pulsating rhythm that echoed her own. “You want me to undress you?”
“Only if you want to. In fact, if you’d rather stop—”
“No.” Even as her nerves rose to torment her yet again, Molly knew she’d die if they stopped now. “No,” she repeated more firmly as her fingers went to work on his shirt.
How could one man’s shirt have so many buttons? Her fingers seemed to have turned to stone. For every button she managed to unfasten, it seemed as if three more popped up to take their place. Nearly weeping with frustration, she glanced up at him and received an encouraging smile in return.
“We have all the time in the world.” He smiled and ran a fingertip along the tender flesh of her bottom lip, reddened from the way she’d been worrying it with her teeth. Grace did the same thing whenever she was concentrating, Reece realized.
Reassured and a bit emboldened, she returned to the task. Success! Finally she was able to push the crisp cotton aside and gaze in wonder at his muscled dark chest.
After another frustrating moment struggling with the buttons at the cuffs, she managed to push the shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. It landed on the floor at their feet and went ignored. Following her instincts, she leaned forward, touched her mouth to his gleaming chest and felt his deep guttural groan vibrating against her lips.
“My turn.” Displaying far more dexterity than she’d managed, he dispatched the buttons running down the front of her silk blouse. Within seconds, it was fluttering downward like a tropical pink bird, and landed atop his shirt.
Her breasts, clad in a skimpy bit of pink lace she’d borrowed from Tessa, felt unnaturally heavy. And although she never would have believed it possible, they’d begun to throb in anticipation of his touch.
“Lovely,” he murmured as he traced the scalloped lace with his finger, leaving a trail of sparks on her already heated flesh.
When he followed the burning path with the tip of his tongue, Molly imagined water sizzling on a hot skillet. Her nipples, pressing against the lace, desperate for his touch, began tingling painfully.
Touch me, they seemed to be crying out. Taste me.
Displaying the patience that had once made him the best ER doctor she’d ever worked with, Reece touched his mouth to the startlingly sensitive spot where her shoulder and neck met, then continued to kiss his way along her collarbone.
“Reece…”
“Mmm?” After skimming his lips hotly up her throat, then back down again, he seemed intrigued with tasting the crook of her elbow.
“Please.” If anyone had ever suggested she’d ever plead for a man’s touch, Molly would have scoffed at the possibility. But at this moment, she was willing to beg, if that’s what it took to get that treacherous mouth back up to her breasts. “Touch me.”
“I am.” He trailed his fingers down the inside of her other arm.
“Not there.” Unable to bear the tension another moment, she combed her hands through his thick hair and literally dragged his head up to her breasts. “Here.”
“Ahh.” He nuzzled the soft yielding flesh, then once again proving himself an expert when it came to women’s clothing, unfastened the front clasp of her bra so quickly, it seemed to dissolve in his hands before he sent it flying. “You are so beautiful.”
Her breasts were round and ripe and tipped with pale pink nipples. Reece cupped them in his palms while running his fingers over those rosy crests. When she began to tremble, he bent his head and took one between his lips, laving lightly at first, then sucking in a way that made her gasp in stunned pleasure. When her hips began to move instinctively against his thighs, Reece realized that although Molly might not think she knew how to make love, her body definitely knew what to do.
The way she was moving against him, the heat of her body, the soft little sighs she was making, conspired to make him forget that he’d vowed to take his time, to be careful with this precious gift she was bestowing upon him. Fires burning in his loins, Reece scraped his teeth against one of the taut nipples and felt her immediately stiffen.
Damn! Cursing himself for his impatience, he looked down into her face and witnessed the sheen of tears glazing the wide, midnight blue pools of her eyes.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“No.” She pressed her fingertips against his mouth. “Please. Don’t apologize. I was loving it. You can’t be blamed for old, knee-jerk responses.”
“I should be more careful. I got carried away.”
“Please, Reece, don’t treat me like something that might break.” She held her arms out from her sides, as if offering herself, body and soul to him. Which, of course, she was. “I want you to treat me like a woman.”
The tension in the room disintegrated as he realized she was telling the absolute truth. “Well, then,” he drawled around his own answering smile, “if you insist.”
Drawing her back against him, he kissed her again, harder this time. His hands moved over her with a practiced touch that had her own palms roaming over his chest, up his arms, across his shoulders, down the muscled smoothness of his bare back.
He sat her down on the bed and unfastened her sandals. When he touched his mouth to the arch of first her right foot, then her left, Molly bit her lip to hold back her cry.
“Don’t do that.” He kissed her again, soothing the wounded pink flesh with his tongue. “I don’t want you to hold anything back, Molly, love. I want to know everything you’re feeling. I want to be sure I’m bringing you pleasure.”
“Oh, you are,” Molly assured him as she kissed him back in an openmouthed wanton way that she’d never imagined she’d want to do with any man. Tongues tangled, lips ground against one another, teeth clashed.
“Oh, God, I knew it,” he said as he managed to unfasten her jeans and pull them down her legs. He released her mouth to kiss his way up each leg.
The hot touch of his mouth was making her legs quake. Her body bowed as Molly lifted her hips off the mattress, seeking…needing…something.
“Knew what?” she managed as the erotic heat took her breath away.
“That you’d be sweet.” He dispensed with the final silky barrier with ease.
The heat flowing through her veins had coalesced into a tight ball that pulsed like a newly born star. A roaring filled her head. When he touched his tongue to her ultrasensitive clitoris, the star exploded within her, around her, flinging her somewhere far above herself.
She couldn’t breathe. She was dying. Surely it wasn’t possible for anyone to live through such heat. But Reece was merciless. As she felt herself crashing helplessly back to earth, he sent her up again. And again, each crest higher, each climax more shattering than the last.
“Please.” She wanted to reach for him, to pull him deep inside her, but her arms lay limp and useless at her sides. “Reece, I need you.”
He’d planned to be gentle. Worried that she’d link the rape with their lovemaking, he’d vowed to be tender. But the animal within had burst free when she’d responded with such surprising passion to his lovemaking, bringing with it a possessive need to plunder. Reece had wanted her hot and hungry, writhing and screaming. And by God, that’s just the way he’d had her. And it still wasn’t enough.
He left her only long enough to strip off the rest of his clothes and sheathe himself in the condom he was never without. Then he drew her back into his arms and resumed kissing her, slow, deep, devastating kisses that went on and on. When he slipped his hand between her thighs and pushed aside the soft slick f
olds to slip a long finger inside her, he found her hot and wet and tight.
Molly had worried that her old terror would kick in when he sought to penetrate her, but now, as a second finger joined the first, stroking her in an intimate way no man had ever done before, pleasure overruled fear.
“You’re so wet,” he murmured, feeling himself on the verge of explosion as her body softened, opening for him.
“I know.” Molly was amazed to discover that she wasn’t the slightest bit embarrassed by the sucking sound of his fingers moving in and out of her body. On the contrary, it was the most erotic sound she’d ever heard. “I can’t seem to help myself.”
“Don’t try to help it.” He leaned down and kissed her, his tongue thrusting into her mouth, its rhythm echoing the wild pulsating one between her legs. “Wet is good.” When she bucked against his hand, he thought he was going to explode. “Wet and hot is very, very good.”
His own desire was nearly out of control now, causing his caresses to become less controlled. He suckled on her breasts as his hand probed deeper, he groaned as she reached between them and wrapped her fingers around his throbbing erection.
“You’re so big.” Her eyes, which had drifted shut to better concentrate on these new sensual sensations, flew open. “We’ll never fit.”
“Believe me, love—” he kissed her again, a soft featherlike promise “—we’ll be a perfect fit.”
He knelt between her silky thighs. “I’ll try not to hurt you.”
“You could never, ever, hurt me.” She twined her arms around his neck and drew his head down to hers for a long, passionate kiss. When she began sucking on his tongue, the last of Reece’s control slipped away.
“Put your legs around me, Molly, love.”
She wrapped her legs around his hips, crying out with surprise and ecstasy as he surged forward, fully embedding himself inside her.
“Oh!” She never could have imagined that anything could have felt so wonderful. She never could have imagined that having Reece inside her could make her feel so complete.
When she began to move against him, Reece feared he wouldn’t last long enough to show her just how good sex could be.
“Honey.” He put his hands on her hips, stilling her restless movements. “Please, just lie still and let me…” He lifted her hips and went even deeper, until he could feel himself pressing against the back of her womb. “Oh, yes.” It came out on a guttural groan of masculine pleasure against her throat. “God, you feel so good. So tight. So warm.”
He was shaking from need for her. He was burning up from the inside out. He’d wanted to watch her, to witness her expression as he took her up over that final peak. But smoke clouded his mind, and a red haze shimmered in front of his eyes, blinding him as he plunged harder, deeper, faster.
All the time she arched against him, keeping up with the merciless pace, her hands moving up and down his back, clenching his buttocks, pulling him even deeper inside her velvet wet warmth.
It was mad. It was ferocious. And it was glorious.
Her vaginal orgasm racked her body; she shuddered convulsively beneath him. Engulfed in a rush of heat, her body clutching at him like velvet fingers, Reece lost all control, shouting out her name as he gave in to his own explosive release before collapsing on top of her.
Not wanting to crush Molly, he shifted them onto their sides, deftly managing the maneuver without slipping out of her. They lay there for a long, silent time, breathless. Spent.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to move from this spot,” he groaned when he was finally able to speak again.
The idea sounded fine to Molly. Better than fine. It was wonderful. “I never knew,” she murmured, pressing her lips against his damp neck, tasting on her tongue the salt born of his exertion. “Never in my wildest imagination did I believe it possible for people to feel so much and not burn up from the feeling.”
Neither had Reece. Sex with Lena had been hot and wonderful, a manifestation of their love. Sex since her death had been hot, but his heart had never been involved in the action.
But sex with Molly had been like throwing himself on a fiery funeral pyre, only to rise again, reborn. He remembered thinking, just before his own orgasm, that if he were to die at that moment, his only regret would be that he wouldn’t be able to do this again.
Christ, for a woman with absolutely no sexual experience, she’d been perfect. They’d been perfect together, which didn’t make any sense since the first time with any woman was at best a getting-acquainted session, at worst a devastating mismatch. But when he’d first kissed Molly, it had been as if she’d been created specifically with him in mind. And every step along the way had only upheld that quixotic feeling.
Reece had never felt exactly like this after making love and that scared the hell out of him. Quicksand, he reminded himself grimly. He’d known it was there, had waded in anyway and was now buried in the damn stuff up to his neck.
Molly had never felt so good. So complete. As she lay in Reece’s arms, basking in the warm afterglow of their lovemaking, she refused to believe that what they’d just done was a sin. She loved Reece, with all her heart, and that, she decided, made all the difference.
It was only when she felt him suddenly flinch that she realized she’d spoken out loud.
“Molly…” He pushed himself up on one elbow and brushed the tousled hair away from her face. “What we did was wonderful. Hell, it was better than wonderful. It was world-class. But it had nothing to do with love.”
She wished she hadn’t opened her big mouth. But now that she had, Molly refused to lie about her feelings just to make him more comfortable with their situation.
“Maybe not for you,” she said, trying to ignore the little stabbing pain in her heart caused by the unwelcome realization that she’d taken their lovemaking far more seriously than he had. “But you’re certainly not the first man to want to make love to me, Reece—”
“I suppose you’re referring to that flyboy BIA doctor?”
If he hadn’t already assured her that he didn’t love her, Molly would have thought, from his tone and dark expression, that Reece was jealous.
“I’m not going to discuss particulars,” she said mildly. “But I’ve had a few offers since leaving the order. And the reason I turned those men down was because I didn’t love them. Like I love you.”
“Look, honey—”
“I have a name,” she reminded him, afraid she was about to hear a speech he gave often in such circumstances.
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know what to think about you anymore. I used to think I knew you. Now I’m beginning to wonder.”
He sat up and raked his hands through his hair. “I’m the same guy I’ve always been.”
“No. You’re not. You never played around with other women when you were married to Lena.”
“Of course I didn’t. I loved Lena. More than life itself. But she died, remember? And now if I want to have sex with a different woman every night—hell, ten women every night, there’s nothing to stop me.”
“Doesn’t it get stale?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“You seemed to enjoy it well enough.”
“I was in love.” On this, Molly would not give in.
He swore. “You can’t be in love with me.”
She met his frustrated look with a calm one of her own. “I agree that you’re not being very lovable right now. However, I can’t help my feelings. I do love you, Reece. I have for years. But there’s no reason for you to get so upset about it.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to—”
“Isn’t it?”
“Lord, no wonder you had to leave the order. You’d probably argue with Saint Peter.”
That stung, just a little, but it was certainly not the first time Molly had been accused of being stubborn. “Do you always insult women right after you make love with them?”
“I told y
ou—”
“I know. It wasn’t love.”
Her wide, patient morning glory eyes tore at something elemental in him. Reece cursed. “You don’t understand.”
“I’m trying to.”
“It’s like love is some kind of cosmic joke. Or jinx. Every time I love someone, I end up losing them. First my parents, then Lena…” He dragged his hands down his face. “It’s just too damn hard, Molly.”
“Surely you don’t believe Lena’s death had anything to do with your loving her? Or her loving you?”
“She was on the way to the store to buy stuff for my birthday cake.”
Momentarily sidetracked from her own needs, Molly stared at him. “Reece, what happened to Lena was a tragic accident. She was in the wrong place at a horribly wrong time. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Perhaps not. But it still hurt, Molly. A lot. I don’t think I could ever survive that much pain again.”
“You love Grace.”
“Of course. But I didn’t have a choice, dammit. She’s my daughter.”
“Love is a gift, Reece,” she said quietly. “It’s given freely. You don’t have to feel guilty if you can’t feel the same way.”
His expression told her this was not exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Nothing.” She smiled up at him when she wanted to cry.
Wanting to put the discomfort behind them, she brushed her mouth against his unsmiling one. “I take that back.” She plucked at his lips. “There is just one little thing….”
It was happening all over again. Just one kiss and she was pulling him back into the flames. “Molly…”
“It’s just sex, Reece.” Her hands moved down his chest, branding him with her delicate touch. “What’s to stop you from doing it again?”
“How about the fact that I can’t perform on command?”
Her fingers brushed against his erection. “Want to bet?”
At her touch Reece surrendered to the inevitable—to Molly. He rolled her over, slipped into her without a ripple and once again let his body and, he feared, his heart, take over his mind.
