by Ruthie Knox
She slid her hands up underneath his shirttail to splay across his stomach. With a shudder, he closed his eyes and fought to tamp down his response. She was so provocative, so freaking hot, but there was an innocence to her, too. He wanted to fuck her silly and shelter her at the same time.
Probably better pick one.
“Is that how you like it?” he asked, though he fully intended to find out for himself. He was going to figure out everything Ellen liked, and then he was going to do it to her as many times as possible. “You want me rough?”
Something flickered in her eyes then, so unexpected and gone so fast he nearly missed it. But he couldn’t miss it. He knew what fear looked like. He’d seen every variety of fear. Felt most of them, too.
“Hey,” he said, capturing her wrists underneath his shirt. He removed her hands and rolled off to one side, interlacing their fingers. “Hey, Ellen. Look at me.”
She didn’t seem to want to, but eventually she met his eyes. “You afraid of me?” he asked.
“No.” And she meant it, he could tell. But she was worried about something. She’d gone too quiet, too enclosed all of a sudden, where before she’d been brash and playful.
“I was just teasing, you know. I would never hurt you, or do anything you didn’t want me to do. Never.” He traced the outline of her face with one finger. “I promise.”
She nodded, accepting his statement. “I know that.”
“You want me to leave?” He didn’t know what else to say. In his mind, he was already walking out of the room, already trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Other than the obvious—that he was bigger and stronger than her, and damn near a stranger. Of course she was having second thoughts. He was an ass.
She shook her head and said, “I want you to take off that shirt.”
Not the answer he’d expected. And he couldn’t have kept the slow smile from spreading over his face if he’d tried.
He kissed her, softer this time. Testing the waters. “You’re sure?”
Her mouth opened, her tongue accepting his. They kissed for a long time, and whatever tension had gripped her let go. Their bodies nudged closer together, his thigh parting her legs and her hand finding his hip to tug him closer. He memorized the weight of her breast with his free hand, the way her breath caught when he thumbed her nipple.
“I’m sure,” she said against his lips.
He believed her.
Unbuttoning a shirt one-handed wasn’t easy, but he could take an M9 apart, clean it, and put it back together blindfolded. He had talented fingers—always had. And he didn’t want to let go of her hand yet.
He rolled onto his back, sat up, and shrugged out of the shirt, releasing her grip for a second so he could pull the sleeve off and toss the whole thing on the floor. When he looked over at her again, she was staring at his torso and breathing through her mouth, her eyes unfocused.
Maybe there had been a point to all those sit-ups and push-ups and ten-mile runs at five a.m. after all.
“Want me to take off anything else?”
She blinked. Shook her head sharply once as if to clear it. Blinked again. And smiled.
Something about that smile knocked him flat. This woman. He couldn’t wrap his head around it, but he felt it just the same. This woman was his. She was for him, in a way no other woman had ever been. She cut the legs out from under him.
He wanted her, and he was going to have her, and he was going to keep her.
“Take it all off, soldier.” Her smile turned sassy. “Make it snappy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and kissed her again.
Chapter Thirteen
Oh, man, Caleb could kiss. He could really, really kiss. He could kiss like kissing was the only thing on his agenda, and honestly, if you could kiss like this, why put anything else in the day planner? She’d be happy to lie here kissing Caleb for the next twelve to twenty-four hours.
Well, mostly happy. A number of her erogenous zones were clamoring for a greater share of his attention. Her breasts were tight and tingling, and some sort of nuclear meltdown had occurred between her legs, because everything down there was wet and hot and swollen and needy. Very needy.
But for the moment, kissing was grand. His kiss was wet, but not too wet. It was hot but controlled, passion banked in favor of a slow exploration of her mouth with his tongue. He was tasting her, testing her, investigating her. He was teasing her. Arousing her. Claiming her.
How anyone could do all that with one kiss, she didn’t know. She didn’t really care, either. Though it did make a girl wonder what he could do with the rest of his fine self if he ever got around to undressing.
“Clark,” she said between kisses. “For God’s sake, get your pants off.”
He smiled, teeth bright in the dim room. “In a minute.”
“Then get my pants off.”
That smirk. “Those are not pants. They’re barely even shorts.”
He took them off, though. Took off her panties, too, with an appreciative languor that made her squirmy with lust. But also, unfortunately, rather nervous, because she hadn’t given a lot of thought to how exposed she’d be in this whole scenario. How much he’d see.
Caleb dipped his tongue into her navel, running his big, warm hands up the sides of her body to spread over her rib cage. Delicious. Incredible. Unfortunately, a loudspeaker in her head wouldn’t stop reminding her she had a pasty white post-baby stomach, and it was totally unfit for this kind of thing.
“Don’t do that,” she whispered. The request might have been more effective if she hadn’t been running restless fingers over his shoulders and basically holding him in place.
He licked a path upward toward her breasts. “Why not?”
“It’s not … That’s not my best area,” she said, wincing internally at how lame that sounded, and how hopelessly out of her league she was with this guy. She’d nearly passed out when he took his shirt off. He was about fourteen acres of sculpted male perfection, taut and toned, exactly the right amount of muscular to tell you he could get the job done—any job—but not so much to make you fear he spent his spare time in a weight room pumping iron and watching his muscles glisten in the mirror.
And she was a mom. With a mom belly.
She’d been trying to brazen it out, playing the bold, sensual seductress he made her feel like, but she was skating a pretty fine line here between lust on the one side and incredulity on the other. And fear. Yeah, there was a little fear, too. He’d seen it, called her on it, and she’d nearly botched the whole thing.
But he’d assumed she was afraid of him, and that wasn’t it at all. She felt 100 percent safe with Caleb. Her body, anyway. No doubt he’d broken some hearts, and he would break hers if she let him. She wouldn’t let him. She’d already made up her mind—her heart was staying out of this.
What she was afraid of was the inevitable moment when she would disappoint him. She wasn’t experienced enough to play with a guy like Caleb. Not young enough or tight enough anywhere. He could bounce quarters off his abs. He’d be used to women who did body shots and owned fur-lined handcuffs and had lingerie rather than underpants.
Caleb moved back a few inches and appraised her, lightly running his fingers down the center of her stomach, then over to the sides and back up. He met her eyes. “You have no idea how hot you are.”
It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t have to say anything. Which was good, because she couldn’t imagine what to say. Thank you for that very kind, very flattering lie?
He planted his hands on either side of her face and gazed down at her, serious and devastatingly handsome. “When was the last time someone made you feel sexy, Ellen?”
“Ah …” Nothing came to mind. Certainly, no one had ever made her feel the way he was making her feel right now, with his hot, hungry eyes focusing all his attention on her. “It’s been a while.”
His eyes narrowed, and she wondered idly whether he’d been a sniper. The man had a way
of putting you in his sights. “How long’s a while?”
She didn’t answer him, so he kissed her. He kissed her lips, her throat, her stomach. He kissed the palm of her hand. She got a little floaty and delirious with the pleasure of it and forgot they were having a conversation, so it came as a surprise when he asked her again. “How long’s a while?”
“Years,” she whispered. “Three years. Thirty years. A while.”
He nestled his head against her stomach and breathed into her belly button. “That’s a shame, sweetheart. A body like this deserves to be worshipped. Someone should be making you feel sexy every single day.” He glanced up her, smiling wickedly. “I know a good man for the job.”
Kissing his way up to her breasts, he made short work of what remained of her inhibitions with his tongue and his hands and his stubble rasping over her nipples. Could you come this way, just from having a man ravish your breasts? She had never thought so before, but Caleb was making her revisit some of her assumptions. Such as the assumption she’d ever had sex before. It was starting to seem possible she’d only been playing at it.
“You’re so soft,” he murmured. “Soft and warm and welcoming. The perfect woman.”
“You’re thinking of kittens,” she said, and then gasped when he sucked her nipple into his mouth.
“What?” He did something wonderful with his tongue that made her hips lift a foot off the bed.
It took her a moment to gather up her stray thoughts and say, in an absurdly low and raspy voice, “Kittens are soft. Women are supposed to be thin and toned, with tight little butts and zeppelin boobs. Don’t you ever read magazines?”
He scooted up to look in her eyes, catching her hands and pulling them over her head. The entire hard, long, sexy length of him pressed her into the bed.
“I promise you, I’m not thinking about kittens,” he said, sliding one hand down the inside of her outstretched arm from her shoulder to her hip. “I’m thinking about how bad I want to be inside you. How hot and wet and tight and soft you’re going to be. I’m thinking about how many times I can make you come before morning, and all the different ways.”
“Oh.” Her thoughts had run away. Oh was the only word she had left.
“I don’t want some scrawny little magazine chick, Ellen. I want you. But you know, I’ve never been much good with words. I’m more of an action guy. So what I’m going to do is show you.”
Oh. He started moving back down her body, tucking his hands beneath her and sliding them downward until they came to rest under her butt. He had such big, capable hands. She really couldn’t get over it. Her entire butt fit in his hands. And my, his broad shoulders did a nice job of spreading her legs apart. My oh my.
“How long since somebody did this for you?” he asked, planting a kiss high up on her inner thigh.
An eternity. “A while.”
“Good.” His lips curved into a very satisfied, very cocky smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
But once he got started, it rapidly became clear that no one had ever done this for her. Not like Caleb did it. When his tongue stroked over the single most sensitive spot on her body the first time, she thought she might pass out from the hot shock of it. She nearly asked him to stop, because her nerve endings were exposed and humming with need, and she understood suddenly that he would be merciless. The question of whether one could have too much of a good thing was not, in the case of Caleb, purely abstract.
It seemed unlikely she would survive.
His tongue swirled around her clit again and again, the pressure varying and keeping her off balance, swimming in sensation just this side of unbearable. A tingling pull built steadily between her legs and forced her to raise her hips toward him, to beg with her body for more, more, more. He seduced her with his tongue and his lips and even, she thought, his teeth, and she kept bringing her knees up so she could dig her heels into the bed, but they just slid down the sheet. She couldn’t find any purchase anywhere.
And then he moved two fingers inside her and located some secret spot she’d never known was there, and he held her hip in place with one big hand while she tried to squirm away from the arrival of the orgasm he’d detonated.
There was no escaping it. The pleasure hit her in one blast wave after another, forcing her surrender. Tightening her muscles and wringing them out until she relaxed into the mattress, limp as a wet rag.
And happy. So happy.
She honestly couldn’t remember when she’d ever felt this good, as if all of the burden she’d been carrying around had lifted and she could breathe and look about, rolling her liberated shoulders and bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet to test what freedom felt like.
She was giddy with it. One orgasm, and he’d made her giddy.
His face appeared above her, and she gazed up at him, thunderstruck. Awestruck. Starstruck. Struck dumb.
Love-struck? No. Not that. Just all the other ones.
“Whoa,” she said, and wiggled her toes to see if they were still there. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Basic training.” He said it with his soldier face on, serious and stern, and for a few seconds she actually believed him. But then he cracked a huge smile and said, “Come on, what kind of question is that?”
“You’re right, Sarge, it was very rude. I ought to be thanking you. Now I won’t have to go to my grave ignorant of what an orgasm is supposed to feel like.”
He pushed her bangs off her face. “Please tell me that wasn’t your first orgasm.” His expression was such an adorable combination of tenderness and horror, she almost laughed.
She shook her head, making her eyes as huge and wide as she could, and said with all the naiveté she could muster, “I don’t know. It seems to have given me amnesia. I can’t remember a single thing that happened to me before you blew the top of my head off.”
He grinned again and brought one hand to her thigh. “That’s a serious problem. But I can help.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yep. What you need is to make some new memories. I’ll assist you.” He lowered his mouth to the base of her throat and began kissing his way downward.
“What about my old memories?”
“They might not be recoverable. But if there were no good orgasms in there, I figure it’s not much of a loss.”
She ran her fingers through the short bristles of his hair. It was silky and thick, and she wondered what it would look like if he grew it out. If it would curl at the base of his neck. She could see Caleb as a wiry rascal of a kid, scraped knees and mischievous eyes, hair flopping over his forehead. Exasperating and lovable.
He returned, kissed behind her ear, and she sighed, lifting her foot to trail along his calf. Where her toes discovered he was still half-dressed. “Clark, if you don’t get these pants off right now, I swear I’ll kick you out of my house.”
“Maybe I should keep them on,” he said. “They’re doing amazing things for my self-control.”
“If I go on record as being terribly impressed with your self-control, will you take the damn pants off?”
He shook his head no. “You’re going to have to do it yourself.”
It wasn’t exactly a hardship. She sat up and shoved him onto his back, then reached for his fly as he interlaced his fingers behind his head. Caleb Clark smiling up from her pillow. Enough to give a girl the vapors.
When she worked open the button and lowered his zipper, her fingers moved inside and curled around their discovery in an automatic caress. There was nothing small or modest about Caleb, that was for sure. And nothing soft, either. No, he grew harder in her grip, straining eagerly toward her. Knowing she could do this to him gave her an embarrassing amount of pleasure.
Nobody had ever filled her with such lust before. No man had ever made her want to get down on her knees and beg. Or get down on her knees and suck, for that matter. Blow jobs had never been high on her list of favorite activities, but it was going to be downright fabulous
to find out what happened to Caleb’s soldier face when she put her mouth on him.
He caught her eye and apparently got a pretty good idea of what she was thinking, because he groaned. Raising himself on one elbow, he brought his mouth to her ear and bit the lobe, sending a shiver skating along her spine. “Careful, babe. My self-control might not be as impressive as you think. Show me a little mercy, huh?”
But she wasn’t feeling merciful. She hooked her thumbs through both of his waistbands and tugged them down, down, down, sliding her fingers over his butt and the backs of his thighs until finally he was naked for her. The dusky head of his cock strained toward her, and when she stroked the softest, hardest part of him, he sucked in a gratifying breath.
She wanted him in her mouth.
She found herself on her back.
“I was going to—”
“Not now.” His eyes glittered with an animal heat that told her Caleb was done playing around.
“I had plans! You would’ve liked them.”
“Yeah. But I’m going to like this more.”
He kissed her and spread her thighs wide with his hand on her knee. “Have you got a condom?”
She looked toward the side table. “In the drawer over there.”
He followed her glance. “Is it three years old?”
“Just about.” She’d bought them within a week of kicking Richard out—not because she expected to have sex with another man anytime soon, but because preparing for the possibility was one more way to thumb her nose at him. “Expired, you think?”
Caleb chuckled. “Yes.” Moving off her, he fished around in his pants for his wallet and then returned with a prize. “I only have one. We’ll have to make it count.”
She expected him to get right down to business after that, but he took his sweet time heating her up, his hands on her breasts and stroking over the outside of her thighs, the inside of her thighs, fingers dipping between her legs, tongue tracing the shape of her collarbone and flicking her nipples and doing to her mouth what she very much wanted him to do to her body. She reached for him more than once, trying to speed him along, but he batted her hands away and counseled patience.
