by Jill Shalvis
part of her to the hottest, neediest part of him, he staggered back against the wall and groaned. “I don’t have a condom in here.”
She bit his neck. “Are you safe?”
He had two handfuls of her perfect bottom, her breasts mashed against his chest. He had a hard-on that could pound nails, snugged up to her sex, which was hot and creamy. His mind was befuddled, to say the least. “Huh?”
“Because I’m safe.” She attached her mouth to his neck and sucked, making his vision swim. “And I’m on the pill.”
“Me, too,” he managed to say as she arched up and let the very tip of him slip inside. Christ, she felt good. “I mean, I’m not on the pill,” he corrected as she snorted. “But I’m safe—”
Her rough, breathless laugh was cut off with a low moan as he thrust into her.
Bare skin to glorious bare skin, Breanne thought, and for her, what happened next was as wild and unpredictable as the storm outside. She felt a blinding need, a desperate ache that had to be assuaged. There was more, too; it was as if she had a hole deep inside her that only he could fill, but she didn’t want to go there, not now. Later, when she was safe and back home, she could dwell; later she could relive all that had happened, even what she’d lost, but for now she’d live in the moment.
And the moment was about this. She fisted her hands in Cooper’s hair and took his mouth in greedy, hungry bites, while the hot water continued to rain down over them. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
“Always a five alarm fire with you,” he murmured.
“Please,” she heard herself whimper.
“We can hurry,” he assured her. “But I’m not going anywhere.” He cupped her face until her eyes met his. “Do you hear me? I’m not going anywhere, Bree. I’m here, right here.”
Her throat closed up, and she couldn’t speak.
He didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he held her still, buried deep within her, and gave her a kiss as gentle, as tender as any kiss she’d ever known, a kiss that brought her to a new level of desire that boggled her mind.
And still he hadn’t moved within her. God, she wanted him to move. She slid her fingers into his hair, along his scalp until his head fell back. Pressing her mouth to his throat, she tried to make sense of this but then he lifted his head again, his eyes glowing with heat and need and an infinite, selfless patience she was afraid she’d never understand.
“Breanne,” he said—just that, just her name through the falling water. With a strength that seemed effortless, he turned them, pressing her back to the wall, opening her thighs even further. “Hold on,” he murmured hoarsely in her ear. “Hold onto me. Yeah, like that.” And he began a series of bone-melting strokes—slow, lengthy withdrawals and returns that she wanted to last forever and ever. But she had her limits, and Cooper was one of them. Within a few moments she began to fall apart at the seams.
He thrust a little higher, a little harder, his hands keeping her right where he wanted her. Pinned, she could do nothing but hold on for dear life, panting, blinking away the water, the steam. Nothing about any of this with him made any sense, not the depth of her wanting of him, or how it was that she hadn’t gotten enough of him.
That maybe she never would.
But she didn’t want it to stop.
“Christ, I can feel you,” he groaned, able to talk while she could only pant. “It’s like you’re milking me. You’re going to come.”
And with a surprised cry, she did.
While she was still shuddering, she somehow managed to keep her eyes open on his, and saw his face darken, his jaw go tight enough to tic, watched his eyes go blind, even as he struggled to keep them open on hers.
He was showing her everything, every single emotion as it hit him, as he came with a gravelly groan torn from deep in his throat. This is trust, she realized as he trembled. Naked trust. Just the thought triggered another orgasm within her, and through the kaleidoscope of sensations, she thought maybe he murmured her name, but she was drowning in the pleasure and couldn’t be sure.
Slowly she came back to herself, blinking away the water, realizing that he’d slapped a hand on the wall behind them, quivering as he struggled to keep them upright. Still clinging to him, she suddenly felt oddly close to tears. Not wanting him to see, she tried to pull free.
With what seemed like great reluctance, he let her legs slide down his body. “You okay?”
Chest tight, she only nodded. She was so far beyond okay.
He smiled, but looked a little shaky himself. “That was . . .” Words seemed to fail him.
She turned away to get a grip on her reckless emotions. “Yeah. Good shower sex.” She grimaced at her own coarse choice of words. Grabbing a towel, she tossed it to him, hitting him in the face.
He pulled it down. “So . . . do you get a lot of shower sex?”
“No,” she admitted. “You?”
“Yeah, but usually I’m alone.”
She laughed. Damn, he was something, always able to pull her out of a funk. “You expect me to believe that a guy who looks like you, and has a sexy job like you do, has to have sex alone in the shower?”
“I’m not exactly a chick magnet. And as for that so-called ‘sexy job’? You know I nearly let it suck the soul right out of me. I think with some distance I’ve got it figured out, but the truth is, my love life’s a barren wasteland. Or was, until I met you.”
She shook her head. “I’m just trying to picture a healthy, red-blooded, innately sensual guy like yourself going for a long time without sex.”
“Yeah, well. I’m hoping the dry spell is behind me.”
That clammed her up because she wasn’t sure how to respond. The thought of jumping into another relationship made her stomach clench. She wasn’t going to let herself fall for this man, but having to remind herself felt a bit like putting the lock on the chicken hatch after the chickens had escaped.
Fact was, she’d leapt feet first into many relationships, and none of them, not a single one, had made her feel like she felt with Cooper—like she was on a roller-coaster ride going too fast, like she was going to throw up, like . . . like she was alive—really, truly, vibrantly, thrillingly alive.
Oh boy.
He hadn’t done anything with the towel she’d tossed him. Completely comfortable in his own skin, he stood there naked. Actually, he wasn’t just standing there, he was coming toward her, then stroking a long, wet strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re looking pretty relaxed.”
“Funny how an orgasm does that.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t look nearly as relaxed. “Funny.”
Don’t ask, she told herself. Don’t. But this was Cooper, and for some reason, she couldn’t turn away. “What’s the matter?”
“That rejuvenated you, having wild shower sex.”
“It would have rejuvenated anyone.”
“Really? So why do I feel more frustrated now than before?”
Not wanting to face the answer to that, she shrugged and began to dry off.
But he waited her out, standing in the doorway when she would have breezed on out. “Why did you cry at the end?”
Her gaze whipped up to his. “I didn’t.”
“You did.”
Embarrassed, she looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Is it because you’re not used to feeling as much as you did?”
Hammer on the nail. “It’s just that . . .” Oh, the hell with it. “I really liked it,” she admitted in a whisper.
“I know.” This was accompanied by a grin. “I was there.”
She stared at his chest, trying to find the right words. “I want to say something that’s going to sound weird.” Lifting her head, she met his gaze. “You’re nice to me.”
“You’re easy to be nice to.”
He always knew what to say.
“I came here to clear my head.” Lifting a shoulder, he shot her a crooked smile. “I thought maybe I’d meet a few snow bunnies, have a great time.”
“Only if that’s all you put on.”
She snorted at that, and got a fleeting smile from him.
“I thought being here,” he said, “that I’d feel better about walking away from my work. My life.”
Her flippancy vanished in the face of his quiet pain. “Oh, Cooper.”
“I thought I’d go home with the answers in my head of what I want to do with myself.”
“Do you have them?” she asked. “The answers?”
“Not a one that you’d want to hear.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and she went very still. “What does that mean?”
He sighed, ran his hands through his wet hair. The muscles and tendons stood out in bold relief with his arms lifted, and her belly quivered. When she was around him, everything within her quivered.
She wanted him. Still. Again.
“Remember when we talked about love?” he asked. “You said you didn’t believe in it.”
“I remember,” she said tightly.
“Well, I do. I believe in it, Breanne. I want it.”
Oh, God.
“All the time I thought it was my job screwing with my head. And in some ways, it was.” He came close again. “But I can move out of vice and not have to go under for months at a time. I can work regular shifts patrolling, or even going the detective route, and still have a life. I want a life, Breanne. And in that life, I want—”
“Don’t,” she said, setting her fingers to his lips. “Don’t say it.”
“You.”
“Oh, my God.”
He just looked at her.
Her throat tightened, her eyes burned. And her heart, God, her heart. It took one big tumble. “It’s only been a day.”
Reaching up, he pulled her fingers from his mouth, keeping her hand in his. “It’s been three, and those were pretty accelerated, intense days.”
“But it takes years to get to know someone,” she said, sounding desperate.
“I’m game.”
She stared at him. He was game. “I wrote ‘no more men’ in my journal. You saw it. It’s in stone.”
“There’s always Delete.”
If only she could really erase some of her mistakes. “It’s my path.”
“Rewrite the path.” He smiled. “That’s the beauty of electronics.”
She swallowed hard. “You sure seem to have a lot of answers.”
“You do, too.”
She rubbed her temples and wished that were true. “I’m hungry. Starving.”
“No, you’re scared and you have to think,” he said. But then he stepped back and finally began to dry off that mouthwatering body. “It’s okay. You go eat. You go do what you have to do.”
Yeah, she would. Like a chicken, she took her out and moved to the door. There she glanced back. “Probably in the real world we’d have nothing in common.”
“Date me and find out.”
“Date?” After what they’d done, dating seemed so . . . tame. “Men say they want to be with me,” she said softly. “But they lie.”
“I don’t. You know that by now.”
She shook her head. “Cooper. I don’t know what to do with you.”
A small smile touched his lips. “Yeah, you do. You just haven’t faced it yet.”
Keep him. That’s what her heart wanted to do. Take this thing where it might go.
But her brain was saying—are you kidding? Run like hell.
Since she’d decided never to trust her heart again, she went with her brain, and ran like hell.
Twenty-six
If a man is talking in the woods, and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?
—Breanne Mooreland’s journal entry
Breanne stepped out of the suite, then turned back and stared at the door. She let out a slow breath. Cooper turned her upside down and inside out, and when she was with him she didn’t know whether she was coming or going.
Mostly coming, she admitted.
Her legs wobbled at the thought. They’d had some damn amazing sex. She’d never been with anyone who could take her right out of herself and then put her back, making her feel like a new woman, a better one. When she was with him, she didn’t have self-doubts. She didn’t wonder what he thought of her. She didn’t do anything but be herself.
And he seemed to like that woman. A heady experience.
At the bottom of the stairs, Dante appeared right out of the woodwork, and still dizzy with thoughts of Cooper, she nearly fell over. “How do you do that?” she demanded.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
He was just kidding. Probably.
“Bad joke,” he said.
“Really bad.” She put a hand to her chest, wondering if the butler had a side career going—murdering obnoxious managers and equally obnoxious guests.
Shelly came up behind Dante and smiled. “Hey. You okay?”
Breanne nodded at her new friend. And Shelly had become a friend. She wouldn’t fall for a man who could—who would—
No. No, she wouldn’t.
But how to explain the bloody gloves beneath Dante’s bed? Or the bloody towel in Shelly’s kitchen? “I just thought I’d try to get something to eat.”
“No problem,” Shelly said. “I’ll bring you something to the great room? Or maybe the library? Where will you be?”
Breanne didn’t feel comfortable going anywhere alone—she was afraid of what else she’d find. Before she could work up a good panic over that thought, Cooper came down the stairs and stood at her side, settling a big, warm hand on the small of her spine.
Such a small gesture, really, and yet . . . yet it meant so much.
“What’s the snow situation?” Cooper asked Dante.
“We’re about halfway. We could be out in a few more hours.”
“Just in time for nightfall,” Cooper said, sounding resigned.
Dante nodded.
“Could you find your way to town in the dark?” Cooper asked him.
“It’d be a suicide run. Frigid temps, bears . . .”
“Bears?” Breanne didn’t like the sound of this. “I don’t want anyone to be out there with the bears.”
“And believe me, no one wants to be,” Dante told her, the big, tough guy letting out a shiver.
“If we kept moving—” Cooper started.
“I’d rather walk the streets of my gang-infested childhood than snowmobile through the woods tonight.”
Cooper sighed. “So we all stay another night.”
“Another night,” Dante agreed.
Shelly bit her lower lip, and Dante set his hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” he said.
Cooper nodded.
