His belly quivered under her questing fingers, but that was nothing compared to the way his cock jumped when she circled it loosely with her thumb and forefinger.
Adam huffed out a laugh and Miranda gave him a swift, secret smile.
“Got a mind of its own, hasn’t it?”
“You have no idea,” Adam responded fervently.
She laughed and ducked her head to watch her own fingers dance up and down the taut, straining sides of his erection. Adam was thick and solid, heavy with arousal and already flushing red at the tip. He felt marvelous in her hand; it was like stroking the embodiment of his passion for her, all hot, silky skin over steely hardness. His hips jerked helplessly up into her grasp, making Miranda tighten her fingers.
The look on his face was exquisite, agonized bliss drawing his handsome features tight. Adam’s unabashed enjoyment of what she was doing was more exciting than Miranda could have dreamed. It made her want to do even more.
She sighted down his body again. She’d never been a huge fan of oral sex, either giving or receiving. It always felt a little beside the point, to her—strictly relegated to the foreplay period. Adam, though, made her want to savor everything on the way to completion.
Without giving herself more time to think about it, Miranda scooted down the bed and lowered her mouth over Adam’s warm, musky flesh. He strained upward with a choked, disbelieving cry, forcing Miranda to draw back a bit and lap contemplatively at the head.
She should’ve known. Like everything involving Adam, this act was made over new and delightful, merely because it was him. Miranda inhaled deeply, imprinting the rich, earthy scent of him on her senses. And the taste!
Sticking her tongue out, she licked again, a long stripe from base to tip. Flavor exploded over her tongue like a surprising amuse-bouche sent out by a master chef. Adam was salty and delicious, with an underlying hint of citrus that made Miranda’s mouth water.
And when she fastened her lips around the wide, flared head of his prick, and started to suck, the groan that rumbled up from the depths of Adam’s chest made blood flush hotly through Miranda’s body.
Sexual power surged through her, quickening her breath and making her startlingly conscious of the slick dampness between her thighs. She curled around his hip and bobbed her head in a short, staccato rhythm designed to drive Adam out of his mind.
“Ah, God, no more,” Adam rasped, grabbing her shoulders and lifting her away from him.
Miranda allowed herself to pout, quite aware that the swollen, bee-stung state of her mouth made it devastating.
Adam stared.
“Christ Almighty, woman.” His eyes were wide and shocked, the aftereffects of her sensual assault still pulsing through him like ripples from a stone tossed into a lake. He reached for her and she went into his arms gladly, straddling his lap with a shiver.
Her most sensitive bits rubbed companionably against his, sending little spirals of delight out from her center to the tips of her fingers and toes. Adam’s big hands cupped her waist, keeping her snug against him as he kissed her.
Miranda heard a half-strangled whimper, high-pitched and desperate. With a start, she realized it came from her own raw throat as Adam traced her bottom lip with the point of his tongue before dipping hungrily into her mouth.
She writhed against him, feeling wanton and hot. Splayed open against the hard, defined muscles of Adam’s stomach, Miranda’s sex burned and throbbed. It was too much.
“In me,” she gasped, pushing the words into Adam’s open mouth. “Please.”
His arms tightened around her like a net, capturing her frantic struggles and taming them down to slight undulations.
“You don’t have to beg,” he said. “Ever. I mean it. I’m way easier than that. At least when it comes to you.” As he spoke, he fumbled with the drawer of his nightstand, rummaging around until he came up with a crinkly packet. He made quick work of the condom, the inadvertent brushing of his fingers along her ass when he rolled it down making Miranda shudder.
“Now who’s talking too much?” Miranda asked, hitching herself higher against him and reveling in the feel of Adam’s callused palm sliding around to cup her bottom.
“You’re right,” Adam admitted, flexing his hands and curling his fingers inward. Miranda shifted, knowing he was testing her readiness to take him, and knowing as well that he’d find her body wet and open.
He groaned when the pads of his fingers met her damp inner folds. Miranda threw her head back at his delicate caress. She could feel the throbbing length of his erection brushing the backs of her thighs, the crease of her buttocks, and she wanted it with a sudden ferocity that took her by surprise.
They moved together without words, Adam’s hands supporting Miranda’s shift onto her knees, her thighs trembling against his flanks as she straddled him. Then the head of his cock was right where she wanted it, so close, tip kissing the wet, aching entrance to her body. Miranda braced her hands on Adam’s wide shoulders. Their faces were mere inches apart. Every breath Miranda took was laden with Adam’s essence.
Their eyes locked. And she opened herself up and slid down his length in a lush, controlled glide that forced hoarse cries of pleasure from both of them.
So full, was all Miranda could think as she sank down and sealed herself to Adam.
The wicked pressure of Adam’s thick cock made lights flash before her eyes, like soft explosions in her peripheral vision. She clenched her inner muscles without meaning to and they both groaned at the intensification of sensation.
Miranda stared at Adam’s lust-blown pupils, his heavy lids and absurdly long eyelashes, and in the midst of the most shattering physical experience in Miranda’s memory, Adam bumped his nose questioningly against hers.
Such a silly, sweet thing, but it unraveled her.
With a cry that sounded broken and defeated to her own ears, Miranda wrapped her arms as tightly as she could around Adam. Somehow, Adam took that as his cue to move, and in seconds they were sitting face-to-face. He started a slow rocking that drove his cock up into her in short, powerful pulses. Miranda buried her face in his shoulder and held on.
Sitting up like this, arms pressing each other close—it was terribly intimate. Adam was so deep inside her that every upward thrust touched a place that had never been touched before, forging pathways into her body and making them his own. Adam swept his hands down her heaving sides and along her cramping legs. Lifting her with one sinewy forearm below her buttocks, he used his other hand to straighten her bent legs and encourage them to clamp around him.
Relief sang through Miranda’s body as she bounced down, now seated fully on Adam’s lap. The new position pressed him even deeper inside her, till she was sure she could almost feel him in her throat. There was something ridiculously hot about allowing Adam to manhandle her pliant body into whatever shape suited his whims.
Twining her trembling limbs around him like an especially clingy vine, Miranda turned her mouth to Adam’s neck, taking his salty skin between her teeth. He grunted and moved into her even more forcefully. She smiled around her mouthful and sucked harder. She had a wild desire to mark him in some visible way, just as he was marking her deep inside.
Every thrust ground her into the hardness of his pubic bone, setting off sharp bursts of pleasure that radiated up her spine, threatening to blow off the top of her head. She shook in his grasp, straining toward something so big it scared her.
“Come on, sweets,” Adam rasped against her cheek. “Let it go.”
He grabbed her waist and pulled her down while thrusting up, circling her hips in a tight spiral that stretched her around him and rubbed her clit against the grain of the crisp, damp curls at his groin. Miranda’s head fell back, too heavy for her neck to support as waves of ecstasy washed over and through her. Adam shouted and shook beneath her, losing the beat entirely. He pumped his hips erratically, emptying himself and extending Miranda’s orgasm until the pleasure became sharp enough to resem
ble pain.
She clung and shuddered through the aftermath, pleased to discover, as she came back to herself, that Adam was clinging just as much. They were pretzeled around each other inextricably, and Miranda’s heart felt fluttery and warm. She never wanted to move.
If she moved, she’d have to think about things. And really, she’d prefer never to think about things again. Thinking was bad. Very bad.
Miranda frowned and burrowed tighter into Adam’s embrace.
“Stop that,” Adam said, his warm voice husky and laced with amusement.
“What?” Her reply was muffled against the damp, delicious skin of his shoulder.
“The wheels in your brain are starting to turn again, aren’t they? Like a hamster in one of those plastic balls.”
Miranda snorted, but allowed her lips to curve into a sleepy smile. “Nice pillow talk.”
“Ooh, speaking of pillows . . .”
TWENTY-THREE
The disentangling process was slow and satisfying for Adam. He liked the way Miranda moved as if she were swimming through melted chocolate, sort of boneless and effortful. Her eyelids drooped nearly shut, getting lower with every breath.
Adam settled her on her back, loving her unselfconscious snuggle into the pillows, and drew the thin cotton sheet over her while he went to the bathroom to clean up.
He narrowed his eyes against the harsh glare of the bulbs over his bathroom mirror. One glimpse was enough to tell him he looked thoroughly “shagged out,” as Frankie would say. Adam grinned at his messy hair and remembered Miranda’s fingers tunneling through it, snarling it up into its current condition.
Glancing back through the open doorway, he was arrested by the sight of her sprawled across his bed the way he’d imagined her, spotlit by the shaft of light from the bathroom. It was a gorgeous picture she presented, and Adam took a moment to enjoy it. The deep evenness of her breaths told him he’d most likely be basking in the afterglow alone, but he didn’t mind.
There was plenty of good stuff to think about. He switched off the bathroom light and stumbled his way back to the bed. Sliding in beside Miranda, he spooned up against her, relishing the silkiness of her skin and the murmuring noises she made. He propped his head on one hand and studied her beautiful face.
Was it stupid and soppy to be happy just watching her sleep?
Whatever. Adam would’ve shrugged, but he didn’t have the energy. Either way, he was definitely justified in the surge of gladness he felt when Miranda turned toward him in her sleep, nuzzling closer and throwing a possessive leg over his.
Thus happily pinned in place, Adam prepared to relive the last hour in his head, from the instant she requested a tour of his townhouse, to now. He wanted to cement it all in his memory, every touch and every look. The tight satin grasp of her body, the breathy, almost shocked sound of her cries, the raw red of the flush that suffused her cheeks and all the way down to her breasts in the moment of climax.
Adam’s heart thrummed with deep satisfaction and contentment. The most basic part of him, what he thought of as his hind brain, was cavemannishly pleased to have his woman locked into his embrace, sleeping peacefully under his protection with the livid evidence of his possession fading into light bruises on her hips.
Miranda was his now.
And he was hers.
Morning hit Miranda like a sledgehammer. One minute, she was lost in a dream where Jess was a toddler again, strapped into his car seat in the front of the van their mother used to drive, while Miranda was stranded in the last row of seats, unable to reach him as the van started to move down the road on its own. The next minute, she was gasping awake in an unfamiliar room, a moss-green sheet knotted around her legs.
“Hey there,” came a gruff voice from her left.
Miranda whipped her head around, scissoring her legs until she could clutch the sheet to her chest. Adam blinked up at her from the pillow beside hers, his mouth stretched in a drowsy smile. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw, but his eyes were clear and alert.
“Hi,” she said, immediately cringing at her own inanity.
“Everything okay?” he asked. “You jerked awake like something bit you.”
“Fine,” she replied automatically. Her head was pounding, tension tightening her nerves to the screaming point. She furrowed her brow in pain, and Adam frowned.
“You don’t look so fine to me, sweets. Head hurt?”
Miranda nodded against the pillow and Adam’s hand came up to rub soothingly at her temples. The headache subsided to a manageable level, allowing her to chuckle.
“This reminds me of the morning after I first met you,” she confided. “I had the worst hangover of my life.”
“I can believe it.” Adam grinned, but it faded fast. “I didn’t think you drank all that much last night.”
“No,” she agreed. “I’m afraid this is more along the lines of an emotional hangover. You know, too many ups and downs in a single evening.”
Adam’s fingers stilled, then combed through her riotous morning curls once before dropping back to the bed between them.
“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well after last night,” he said carefully, but Miranda could hear the underlying disappointment in his voice.
“It wasn’t you,” she hastened to say. “You were wonderful, perfect. Exactly what I needed.”
He actually blushed a little and turned his face farther into the pillow, mashing his nose and giving her only a glimpse of his crooked smile. Her heart swelled dangerously.
“I mean it,” she insisted.
“God, Miranda . . .” Adam faltered into silence, and for a few seconds, she was afraid he wasn’t going to go on. When he spoke again, it was painfully halting. “I wish I could fix this for you. I want it to be easy, like math: one down plus one up equals even keel. But I know it’s not.”
“Not exactly. But, honestly, I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through last night without you. Outside the bar, with Jess, and then after, here. You took me out of myself, made me . . . well, happier than I’ve been in a really long time.”
Fear dragged at her chest with that confession, but even as she pressed her lips together and watched closely for his reaction, some part of Miranda knew that she was safe with Adam.
Her hand fluttered out, unsure where to settle, and he caught it in his, squeezing her fingers reassuringly. His eyes had cleared, and he was watching her with a gentle understanding that wrung the breath from her lungs.
“I’m glad I could help,” he said quietly.
“You did,” Miranda assured him, her throat aching. “You still are.”
Adam’s mouth twisted into a lopsided smile. The pall that was trying to settle over Miranda’s mood lightened from black to a misty gray.
“How about breakfast? All part of the full-service Adam Temple Experience. Our motto is: sleep with a chef, expect to get stuffed. In more ways than one.”
He waggled his eyebrows outrageously and bounded out of bed, entirely unconscious of his own nudity. Miranda rolled over on her stomach to better admire the view.
“I’m not a big breakfast person,” Miranda confessed. “I usually grab a bialy from the coffee cart on my way to work.”
“Get out.” Adam rounded on her, hands on lean, bare hips and a scandalized expression on his face.
Miranda laughed, blushing a little at her own struggle to get her eyes to focus above Adam’s waist. “I know, I know, it’s the most important meal of the day.”
“Fuck that. It’s the most lip-smacking meal of the day. Whatever you want, from sweet to savory, pancakes to corned-beef hash. Name it, and it’s yours.”
Adam flung his arms out grandly. Something about the gesture seemed to clue him in that he wasn’t wearing any pants. He looked down at himself as if surprised, but evinced no embarrassment whatsoever as he turned to rummage through his bureau, eventually finding and putting on a pair of plaid pajama bottoms.
“Nice jammies,” Miranda teased.
Miranda shook her head. “Have you ever told her she’s wearing pajamas as clothing?”
“Why should I? They look great on her. Also, I’m a little afraid to. She’s perpetually cranky.”
“Oh, please,” Miranda scoffed. “Like there’s a woman alive you couldn’t charm.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. “Damn, Miranda. Keep that stuff up, and I’ll start thinking you like me.”
Miranda threw a pillow at him, which he dodged, laughing.
“Come on,” he cajoled. “Get up and cook with me. It’ll be fun.”
“Fine.” Miranda threw back the covers, determined to be as nonchalant and suave about this whole nudity thing as Adam was.
From the corner of her eye, she saw his throat work in a convulsive swallow.
“Okay, maybe I lied,” he said. “Jesus. You’re even more gorgeous the morning after. How the hell is that possible?”
Miranda pressed her lips together to hide a smile. His appreciatively roving gaze sent sparks of warmth goose-bumping over her skin. It also enabled her to stand up and strike a casual pose.
“Are you sure you’ve given away all the pajama tops?” she asked. “I don’t particularly want to face my clothes from last night. A sweaty dinner service followed by a stint in a smoky bar isn’t liable to have left them fresh as a daisy.”
“Yeah. What?” Adam blinked and dragged his gaze away from her chest. Miranda arched a brow at him and was pleased when he flushed.
“Sorry. I think I have something you can wear. Hold on.” He groped ineffectually at the open bureau drawer, never taking his eyes off her. Miranda decided it was time to take control.
“I’m going to borrow your toothbrush while you look,” she announced. Head held high, she marched into the bathroom and shut the door.
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