Off Kilter

by Donna Kauffman

  He grinned. He’d thought to be gentle and tender and soothing given all she’d been through that day. But she was being playful…. playful, fun, teasing. Hot, passionate, physical. He could see that was exactly what they both needed. Step out of the dark, indeed, and into the pure, rejuvenating, healing light.

  “In the way that tells me you want me,” he said, grinning broadly as he gave himself completely over to her and whatever mood she wanted to set. “Want me bad,” he added. “Not that I can blame ye, of course.”

  “Of course. Modest, even here. I like it.”

  “Oh, I plan to see that you more than like it.” He made his move, rolling up and taking her with him, then flipping her down to her back, pinning her with the full length of his body.

  “More than like it?” she taunted right back and the avid gleam in her eyes had him so erect he hurt. “How, exactly, do you plan to do that?”

  “I have many, many ways.”

  Her eyes darkened as the pupils shot wide and her mouth parted, just slightly. He prayed he could keep his control long enough to take her on the promised journey of pleasure. Because one touch and he wasn’t too certain he would be able to last. The first time, anyway.

  “Big talk,” she said.

  “Aye, but small, delicately concentrated and concerted actions,” he countered, then began unbuttoning her green cotton shirt. “In fact, there are two very concentrated areas I intend to spend a very focused and intent amount of time tending to right now.”

  “Do you?” she said, but her hips were bucking, and her eyelids slipped shut as she sighed when he flicked open the front closure of her sheer, mint-colored bra.

  “Oh, aye, that I do. Green is a good color on ye,” he said, promptly peeling the shirt off her. Using his teeth, the cups of her brassiere followed.

  “Aye, indeed,” was all she managed as he dragged the shimmery fabric slowly across her taut, dark nipples. She was tall, lanky, and her body was lean, with a light ripple of muscle. The body of someone who required it to hold up to a lot of steady work. She wasn’t soft in too many places that he could see.

  He leaned down and kissed the smooth spot between her bare breasts, then worked his way, with lips and tongue, around the soft swell of each of them, careful to leave the pebbled tips free from contact.

  She was writhing beneath him with greater need, and her moans were coming in short gasps. Finally she lost patience and dug the fingers of her free hand through his hair, urging him to take what she so badly wanted to give him.

  “Patience, dragonslayer,” he murmured against her skin.

  “I thought that was you,” she panted.

  “I would be. Will be,” he said, shifting his weight a little lower, and pinning her wrists easily back to the bed, delighted when she let him. “But, at the moment, I feel like I’m the one breathing fire.” He blew air directly across one nipple, then the other, making her buck hard off the bed under him. “You know what puts out fire?”

  “What?” There was pleading in her tone, but it was the bald need that threatened to destroy what little control he had.

  “This,” he said, and flicked his tongue across the tip of one, then the other. She moaned and his own body grew rather insistent. He took one nipple in his mouth, laved it with his tongue, suckled it, until he thought he might drive himself over the edge as she bucked and arched beneath him, pressing directly against every straining inch of him. But he moved to the other, wanting to draw out the exquisite sensations, as long as he could.

  “Roan,” she pleaded. “Oh—!”

  Her hips jumped off the bed as he nipped at the hardened tip, and at first he thought he’d hurt her, but then she kept bucking and moaning and he realized she was coming.

  “I’m no’ sure I’ll be able to keep up with ye,” he said, but he was happy at the prospect of trying. She’d been through so much, felt and seen so much tragedy and heartache, suffered so much of her own, it was stunning to him that she was so open, so responsive to him. Maybe it was because she didn’t let anyone close and the deprivation had made her ultra sensitive … or maybe it was the heightened emotions from earlier sending her nerve endings into a frenzy.

  At the moment, he didn’t much care. Because he’d moved his nipping, suckling attentions to her other nipple … and swore she was climbing again.

  “Roan,” she said, first on a moan, and then sounding almost panicky. He looked up, alarmed that maybe, somehow, it was triggering something bad inside her head. But her expression was one of stunned pleasure, and he realized that she was as shocked by her response as he was. “Don’t st—oh, exactly,” she said through a long groan, as he went back to what he’d been doing. “Exactly that. Lots of that.”

  He grinned against her damp skin, liking how verbal she was, how frank, how … Tessa. Even in bed. It made him quite delightfully curious to find out what she’d be like if he … He scooted down further, sliding his hands down the sides of her waist, to her hips … and the waistband of her khaki trousers.

  “Oh, that would be …” she began, but ended with a groan as he slowly tugged down the zipper to part the front panels of her trousers … only to find matching mint green silk. She had the body, mind, and spirit of a strong, independent, tough woman … yet she wore silk.

  “What?” she breathed as he continued to look. She was writhing beneath the weight of him pinning her thighs. “A girl can’t have nice things?”

  She was pushing at him, goading him, but it only added to his pure delight … and ramped up his desire. “I was thinking utilitarian cotton,” he said, “so you’ll have to forgive me.”

  “I have plenty of those, too, if they’re more your thing.”

  “Oh, these are purely my thing. Exactly my thing. Although if you move like this every time I’m on top of you, it likely willnae much matter what you have covering your most delectable bits.” He levered his weight up and jerked her pants down in one tug. “Because they’re no’ going to be coverin’ much for very long.”

  She wriggled beneath him as he slid them off her legs completely, then returned his attentions to the scrap of shimmer she called panties.

  A glance up showed she was grinning, even as her neck arched and she pushed her head back into the soft down of the mattress, her eyes tightly shut. “I can live with that,” she managed tightly.

  “Good to know,” he said, then ripped the panties off her, too.

  He teased her with his tongue, but there were other parts of him begging to be the thing doing the teasing, and he was straining to the fair lengths and breadths of his control.

  Her body was so finely tuned to pleasure, he carried her over once again, and she was still shuddering and twitching as he yanked his shirt off, followed swiftly by his trousers. He reached for the nightstand, but she stopped him.

  “It’s okay. I mean, I’m okay. Protected. I—like to keep things on schedule,” she said with a dry smile. “There are so few things I can do that with. And, clean bill of health, too. Well, for my body. I can’t vouch for my mental state.”

  “Tessa.” He rolled toward her, and moved up so they were even with each other, then pulled her close to him. The shock of her lovely, warm, bare skin sliding over his felt … tremendous, along the scale of rock his world, bloody fantastic. He lost his train of thought. “That feels—you feel so … brilliant,” he said, like a complete dim nob.

  “So do you,” she said, sliding her hands along his back.

  He thought his brain synapses might just blow their circuits all at once, the friction was so electric and delicious.

  She looked into his eyes. “Roan, if you’re more comfortable using something, I don’t want you to feel—”

  “I trust you. And you have nothing to worry about from me.” He rolled her gently to her back and moved on top of her. “I’d rather not have a single thing come between us. If you dinnae mind.”

  She smiled up at him, and whatever part of his heart he might have still claimed as his own was
well and truly lost then. It was all hers, for the keeping.

  “I definitely dinnae mind,” she teased. “And I definitely dinnae want to wait.” She lifted up against him, sliding him between her thighs, pressing, pushing him right where he wanted to be. Her smile grew, even as she gasped when he pushed the tip along her slick, tender skin. “If ye dinnae mind.”

  Both groaned as he pushed slowly, steadily into her. She gripped him so tightly he thought he’d not last past the first thrust. She lifted her hips, took him in more deeply, then gasped and arched hard against him. They moaned in unison as he withdrew, then again as he thrust back inside her. From there they found their rhythm, naturally, easily. It was incredibly perfect.

  He tilted her hips, urged her legs more tightly around his back, as he sunk more fully into her.

  She climbed slowly. “Roan—oh, that’s … so”—she bucked wildly against him as she went over the edge—“good,” she ground out as she continued to move and shudder against him.

  Hearing his name, and that urgent need, feeling her contract and pulse around him, shot him straight to the brink. He thrust harder, deeper, and she met him at each peak. He’d thought to savor the rush as it swept through him, draw it out, enjoy each slippery, jerking, shuddering thrust as he came, but instead he was yanked, almost violently over the edge, and literally growled as he came roaring inside her. There was no finesse, no tenderness, nothing about it that was anything other than raw, primal, and downright visceral.

  As soon as he could pry his eyes open and see something other than stars twinkling in his peripheral vision, he had every intention of apologizing for being so rough. “Are ye okay?” he managed between pants.

  “I’m glorious,” she said, sounding happily, completely sated.

  He managed to crack one eye and shift his heavy weight off her narrower frame. “Truly? I didnae hurt ye there at the end? I didn’t mean to lose control like that, take ye like—”

  “A fiery dragon?” Her grin was slow, wide, and very, very naughty. “Oh, aye, you can do that anytime. In fact, I might make it my new life’s work to learn all the ways I can slay that dragon of yours.”

  She surprised a laugh out of him. “I’m going to regret that metaphor. I can see it already.”

  “Oh, I think I can make it something to look forward to,” she said, rolling toward him, curling up along the length of his body—his fully and completely spent body.

  So it was with stunned amazement that he felt himself twitch as she slid her hand over his chest and up along the side of his neck. He’d thought it would take days to see even a flicker of life resume, that’s how entirely and thoroughly she’d taken him.

  He gathered her closer, and urged her cheek down to his shoulder, letting his eyes drift shut as he pressed a kiss to her hair. “I look forward to … rising to meet the challenge.”

  She laughed, and that sound warmed him as much as her earlier moans and gasps had titillated him.

  There were so many things left to say, left to know, left to figure out. But he refused to tarnish even a fraction of that moment. There would be a time for all of that later.

  “Supper now?” he murmured against her hair, as he lazily stroked the smooth skin of her back.

  “Supper later,” she said, sounding sexily drowsy and replete.

  He tugged the duvet up and over them and they snuggled amidst the stuffed feather coverlet. “Supper later it is, then,” he said, and with her cheek pressed against his heart, he held her as they both drifted off.

  Chapter 19

  It was the screaming that woke her, had her clawing out from under very heavy mosquito netting, digging, digging, for her gun, her knife, anything to get the weight of the intruder off her. She realized, quite distantly, as she fought valiantly and ferociously, that the screamer was her.

  There was shouting. It was her tormentor. She had to fight him off, had to save—wait, her name, someone was shouting her name. It was … Roan. Roan? What was he doing in Bogota?

  “Tessa, it’s okay. It’s me. Tessa!”

  He pinned her shoulders hard to the bed with his hands, then slung his weight over her, using his legs and feet to keep her from thrashing and hurting either one of them.

  “Tessa! You’re okay. I have you. You’re okay.”

  Roan had her. It was Roan. He had her. She must be okay then. She stopped struggling, then immediately grabbed his arms. “We have to get out, we have to go! Now—they’re coming!” She was frantic, realizing she needed to save them. He wouldn’t know, wouldn’t understand what it was like here. She had to save him. “No time, Roan. There’s no time. Get up, come on!”

  “Tessa,” he said, and she felt him kissing her cheek. Had he lost his mind?

  “Run!” she screamed. Didn’t he get it?

  “Tessa!”

  Something about the sharp demand made her open her eyes. “Roan! We have to—” But then she stopped herself as awareness slowly started to sink in … followed swiftly by utter and complete mortification. “Oh … oh, God. No—” She looked at him, eyes wide. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her throat knotted against a renewal of tears. Tears she would not shed. She’d done enough of that. “Oh, no.”

  He rolled off her, but pulled her with him, tried to tuck her against him. She instinctively shoved, needing space, air … time. To think, to get under control. Then get away. She couldn’t be with him. She’d thought she could. But she couldn’t. She cared. Too much. And no matter what he thought, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—put him through it.

  “Come here,” he said, gently at first, but then with a bit more urgency. When she tugged, he didn’t let her go, wasn’t the gentleman she’d known him to be to that point. “Just … come here. For a moment. Take stock, gather yourself.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Try it this way,” he said. “And see how that works out.”

  She grudgingly let him pull her down to his side. “Don’t you dare tell me this is okay. This is far, far from okay. I’m not okay, and I hate this. Hate acting crazy in front of you. And nothing you say is going to change that. I’m just telling you right now so you won’t take it personally. But please, don’t even try.”

  “Fine, no words of wisdom,” he said. “So, just shut up then and let me hold you, okay? I want to hold you. Because it makes me feel better. Can you do that for me? After all, you tried to slug me half to death and you’ve got a pretty wicked left hook. I’m just tellin’ ye.”

  She was so stunned by the words he was saying, she simply gaped at him.

  And he had the nerve—the nerve—to smile. “Good. I thought that would get your attention.” He pulled her again, more gently, so they were aligned, and held her with both arms wrapped around her. “I know you’re feeling like an idiot at the moment, but the only idiotic thing you can do would be to shut yourself off. From this. From me. I’m no’ some fragile flower, ye know.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “I thought you weren’t going to armchair analyze me. Tough love, that’s what you were dishing out just now and that feels just about right.”

  He tipped her head back, with just enough force so that their gazes met … and clashed. “I canno’ be that tough with ye. But I can give ye the love part. Tessa … it is what it is. We’ll survive it. Maybe I can help. When ye finally knew it was me, ye calmed right down.” He smiled and stroked her face. “Ye tried to save me, in fact.”

  She glared at him. “How on earth can you think this is even remotely amusing?”

  “I’m no’ amused. But I am quite happy.”

  “Because I had a terrifying nightmare? They feel quite real to me when I’m having them, in case you were unaware.”

  He gentled his touch and his smile and she wanted to smack at both, even as she realized she was being awful because that would be the thing to push him away the fastest. And get her back to ground zero—which meant … alone.

  That’s not really what she wanted. Not at all.

&n
bsp; “Maybe happy was the wrong word. I hate, with more passion than ye know, that you suffer. But you were in the midst of a terror, and rather than fight me, you tried to save me. Your instinct was to defend yourself, then protect me.” He shook his head when she’d have spouted off again. “I’m merely pointing out that it made a difference. My being here. So, keep me here. And maybe, at some point, I’ll be the one doing the protecting. In your dreams. And out.”

  She stared at him, as if he was an alien.

  “We made it through,” he said. “And we will again.”

  “Sometimes it’s every night. I never know, Roan.”

  “We made it through,” he repeated, “and we will again. And again. I’m no’ a quitter. Not on you, not on your terrors. Or havenae ye been listening to me?”

  “Why would you willingly sign on for that?”

  He took her face in his hands then, gently but firmly, and she saw anger in his eyes for only the second time ever. She’d been idiotic the last time, too, but apparently she hadn’t learned anything.

  “I’m a man who loves you. You, Tessa. All the parts that are hard, aye, but all the wonderful parts that are good, too.”

  Her heart tilted right on the edge, and she was terrified to let it fall. Wouldn’t it simply shatter on impact? She couldn’t be lucky enough to have this much goodness. Could she? “I don’t feel all that good or wonderful. And I’m lashing out at the one good and wonderful thing I have.”

  “Answer me one thing.”

  She looked straight into his eyes, and promised herself she’d respond honestly, no matter what he asked. She owed him that much. Even if the answer wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Okay.”

  “Your heart”—he paused, and the earnestness, the openness, so plain on his face, shook the anger right out of her—“do I have even a part of it yet?”

  Her defenses crumpled. Fully. Oh the things he said. “Oh … Roan.” Her throat was tight and tears rushed to the corners of her eyes. Since she’d let them out, apparently they weren’t going back into full seclusion ever again. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. It meant she was letting herself feel. That didn’t have to be such a terrifying thing. “I wasn’t really sure I had one, you know.”