by Cindy Dees
“You’re white as a sheet.”
“Sorry. I’ve had about all the tight spaces I can stomach for one day.”
“I know just the thing to make you feel better.”
“Do tell.”
“How about I show you instead?”
During the short ride back to their cabin, he said no more about what he had planned. Dinner was waiting for them when they got there. She passed on the thick hamburgers, but dug into a tasty salad. Darkness fell, and the desert heat faded as quickly as the twilight.
“There are sweatshirts in the dresser,” he murmured. “Let me get us a couple.”
He came back into the living room carrying the quilt from the bed and two giant GO ARMY sweatshirts.
“C’mon,” he said cheerfully, hoisting the quilt in his arms. He passed her one of the sweatshirts, and it came down nearly to her knees. He pulled on the other one, and it fit him comfortably. Okay, she felt puny now.
“Where are we going?”
“Where else? Stargazing.”
How did he know? Smiling widely, she followed him outside. He made his way around the back of the cabin and led her up a narrow animal trail crisscrossing the massive sandstone outcropping there. In a few minutes, he’d spread out the blanket and they stretched out side-by-side atop a bluff that afforded them an unrestricted view of the entire night sky.
There was no ground light to speak of and the display of stars and planets was magnificent. Short of using a telescope, it was one of the best night skies she’d ever seen.
“I’ve got to come out to the middle of the desert more often. This is incredible.”
“What’s your favorite object in the night sky?” he asked in an awed hush beside her.
“I like the Milky Way star band. All those suns and their planets out there. I figure some of them have got to have intelligent life on them,” she answered.
He nodded beside her. “I like the stars that twinkle. Why do they do that anyway?”
“Atmospheric interference from the earth makes them seem to twinkle. Some stars that actually do twinkle—pulsars—but they’re generally far too faint to see with the naked eye.”
They fell silent. She breathed deeply, savoring the vastness of it all, the sense of wonder within her that soared free out here.
“Feeling better?” he asked eventually.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Warm enough?”
She nodded. Although even if she were half-frozen, she wouldn’t have admitted it. She didn’t want to go back inside yet. She observed, “I think I was born several centuries too soon. I’d give anything to head out there and explore.”
“I think you were born at just the right time,” he replied absently.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Because this way I got to meet you.”
There it was again. The instant and powerful attraction hanging between them. “Would you mind if I asked you a dumb question?”
Carter chuckled. “I can’t imagine any question from you being dumb, but shoot.”
“Is it always like this with you and women?”
He twitched beside her. “Like what?”
It was her turn to squirm. “You know. All sexy and heavy breathing-ish?”
“Are we breathing heavily? I hadn’t noticed.”
“I’m serious,” she retorted. “I’m the first to admit that I don’t have much experience with this kind of stuff. But I don’t ever recall this degree of tension between other guys and me.”
“Glad to hear it,” he rumbled under his breath.
“Well?” she demanded.
He rolled to face her, propping himself up on an elbow to loom over her. “No, smarty pants. It’s not always like this. You’re special.”
“Special as in wonderful or special as in I’m a little thick in the head?”
“You really have to get over this rotten self-image of yours,” he declared.
“I’m a scientist, remember? I deal in facts. Fact is, I’m no big catch.”
“Fact this, then.” His mouth closed over hers and he kissed her slowly and deeply. And oh, my, did she ever like it. He clearly planned to take control of the situation, and she thought that was just perfect. She was sick and tired of neurotic, beta-male academicians being all timid with her. Turned out she didn’t like the Woody Allen type after all. Give her Conan the Barbarian or give her no man at all!
Carter might have the muscles, but she had to admit her Conan didn’t kiss like a barbarian at all. His mouth moved across hers with finesse, his tongue dipping between her teeth to lick at her like a delicious ice-cream cone. His free hand wandered across her stomach and somehow slipped under her sweatshirt, his palm burning hot against her skin. Or maybe that was her burning up the night like that.
“You’ve been playing with fire ever since we met,” he muttered against her neck. “Time to follow through on all those come-hither looks and flirty little smiles, sugar. If you plan on telling me to stop, do it now.”
Or else what? The idea of driving him wild with lust made her head spin. And the stars over them definitely were spinning faster than normal.
“Don’t stop,” she gasped against his mouth.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, already!”
He laughed darkly. “Then come with me for a ride, little girl. You might be able to take me to heaven, but I can take you someplace much, much hotter than that.”
This was a colossal mistake. Carter knew it as surely as he knew he wasn’t going to stop unless she asked him to. But it just wasn’t in him to turn away from all her sizzling heat. It was wrong to ask her to fix what was messed up in his head. But he’d felt so empty, so broken, for so long. He just wanted to feel whole for once. Deep in his gut he needed to feel alive again. Hell, to feel like a man.
He gathered her close, savoring her smallness and softness against him. She was his polar opposite in every way. His life was defined by self-discipline and focus. Intensity. Seriousness. But she was all about laughter. Imagined possibilities. Embracing life. He used to be like her. He would give anything to be like her again.
And he was selfish and greedy to even contemplate using her to gain all of that back for himself. “We shouldn’t do this,” he forced himself to mumble.
Her warm hands slid around his neck as she murmured, “Why not? Give me a logical argument.”
Logical? Hell, he could barely remember how to spell his name with her pressing up against him like this, all eager sexual intensity. She was making no secret at all of her interest in pursuing a more intimate relationship with him. He mumbled lamely, “Because we’re going to be working together?”
“Coworkers have romances all the time,” she retorted immediately against his lips.
Her body undulated against his and his flesh hardened even more. He groaned in near pain. He wanted her so badly that he could barely ungrit his teeth enough to get out, “We hardly know each other.”
Her tongue slipped between his lips for a long, lazy taste of him before she murmured, “All the more reason to get to know each other. I may be a ditz sometimes, but I’m not dumb enough to think that a man like you is going to come along more than once in my life. This may be reckless, but I’m not letting you get away from me. I’d never forgive myself if I did.”
Her soft belly pressed against his groin, and he’d swear she did it intentionally. His jaw clenched in an effort to control himself. He was a gentleman, dammit. He didn’t rip women’s clothes off them and fall on them like some slavering beast.
It was as if she picked the thought right out of his brain. “If I asked you to tear off my sweatshirt and have your wicked way with me, would you do it? As a favor to me?”
A favor? He laughed shortly. “Sugar pie, you’d be doing me the favor.”
A satisfied smile spread across her face that had his eyebrows climbing in alarm. She drew back far enough to place her hands on either side of his face and g
aze deeply into his eyes. “Carter, I need you to do this for me. I want you to rip my clothes off, throw me down and make love to me the way a woman’s meant to be made love to. I don’t want your logical excuses, I don’t want your ever-so-principled insistence on doing the right thing. Heck, I don’t even want you to be a gentleman. Can you do that for me?”
His brain froze up right then and there. Complete popsicle. Worse than his body had ever frozen up on him. “I…you…you don’t know what you’re asking of me,” he choked out.
Men like him were careful to keep the strength within them tightly leashed when they were functioning in the real world. But she wanted him to cut it loose? She had no idea what that really meant. She was asking him to free the part of himself that his doctors said he was unconsciously doing his damnedest to bottle up. He had no idea what that part of him would do with a woman in the mix.
She was speaking again, her eyes big and earnest. “…am a grown woman. I have needs and fantasies. And I’m not the kind of woman who usually attracts the kind of man who can fulfill those. But I think maybe you are that kind of man. Am I right?”
“I, uh…” Hell, he couldn’t even string a coherent sentence together. “Maybe. Yeah. But…”
“But what?”
He gulped. “You’re killing me here. You have to tell me what you want. And you have to tell me if I go too far.”
“Take me to that uncontrolled place inside you. That’s what I want from you. Share that with me. Show me what I’ve always been missing in a man.”
The woman was deadly. How was a guy supposed to say no to that? Somehow he had to find a way to get control of this situation again. Back away from the abyss yawning so temptingly before him. Could he do it? Could he let her feel his heat without being burned alive by it? No. He wasn’t that strong.
But then her hands were on his belt buckle, and damn if her fingers weren’t nimble. She had his pants open before he knew what she was doing. Her hot little palm slid down his belly and grasped him boldly. He shuddered in shock.
And the minx smiled up at him sweetly. “Please?”
“You don’t fight fair,” he gasped.
“Never said I did,” she panted back. “The only problem is I didn’t get to try out the short skirt or sexy lingerie I had planned. I was really looking forward to those.”
The thought of her in a scrap of lace and not much else sent his pulse pounding within her fist. Who’d have guessed the astrophysicist was such a wildcat?
She purred deep in her throat. “Wanna know what else I’ve always imagined doing with a big strong man like you?”
He laughed painfully. “I hope it involves you getting naked pretty damn soon, or else the guy whose sweatshirts we borrowed is going be plenty mad when he finds them in shreds.”
Lily pushed against his chest and he obliged her by rolling onto his back. Like she had in the car, she straddled his hips. But this time, she smiled down at him like some fey creature of the night and reached for the hem of her sweatshirt, drawing both it and her T-shirt over her head by slow inches.
Her body was slim, girlish. But he was coming to learn very quickly that packages could be deceiving. She’d obviously put a great deal of thought into this and knew exactly what she wanted. Far be it from him to disappoint the lady. He gritted his teeth and prepared to do mortal battle with himself.
He reached out for her stomach, enjoying the satin smoothness of her skin. The lower curves of her breasts came into view and he grazed them with the backs of his knuckles, relishing the way her back arched into the light caress. She made a hungry noise in the back of her throat.
Her breasts, revealed by inches, were not large but high and firm and beautifully shaped. Contracting his abdominal muscles powerfully, he sat up to capture the rosy tip of one of them in his mouth and rolled his tongue around the stiff little bud.
As she moaned low, he lay back down. “If you want more of that,” he murmured, “you’ll have to give yourself to me. I’m not going to just take it.”
She smiled broadly. “My pleasure.” She leaned forward, bracing herself on the blanket on either side of his head, and presented her breasts to him like candy for the taking. And take them he did. He suckled and nipped and laved the tender flesh until her nipples stood out proudly and she was begging in a raw voice for more.
She wanted to do this with him? So be it.
He surged up, sweeping her into his arms and rolling over, pinning her beneath him. “I can’t promise to be gentle,” he warned.
“I promise I don’t want gentle,” she shot back.
He stripped her jeans quickly and, impatient, tore her panties off, too. They gave way with a soft rending of cotton and a less soft sigh of delight from her. The astrophysicist was wilder than he’d ever dreamed.
Carter shucked the rest of his clothes and pushed her thighs wide, splaying her beneath him until she was at his mercy. She trembled, and he checked himself long enough to ensure it wasn’t fear but desire making her quake like that. He stroked a finger along her female flesh. It was plump and juicy and ripe and she cried out his name softly. The woman was more than ready for the picking.
But she’d asked for this. Hell, demanded it. And he had plenty of desire for it within him. He cupped his hands under her buttocks, lifting her to his mouth. She gasped and lurched like a man had never taken her this way before. Her former lovers were complete idiots if they had skipped this feast of peaches and cream. She moaned, and then groaned, and then cried out sharply. He relished every last note of her pleasure.
When she was thrashing mindlessly, lifting her hips to him wantonly of her own volition, he shifted his attention to the rest her body, kissing and nibbling his way across her velvet skin, leaving behind a path of trembling destruction in his wake. She was built very small, and he was…not. He needed to make sure she was more than ready to receive him. To that end, he turned her over on her belly and straddled her thighs, holding hers lightly closed with his.
He proceeded to massage her shoulders and back. She seemed perplexed by his change of tactics but enjoyed it, relaxing until she was entirely boneless beneath him. He slid his palms lower, to her pert little tush. It was resilient and round in his hands and he had all kinds of plans for that sweet flesh later. But first, he had to get her to make more of those delicious sounds.
He caressed her skin lightly and she rolled over, giving herself to him without any hesitation or self-consciousness. The trust she showed in him was humbling. He touched her with his fingertips in long, slow strokes that had her writhing madly in moments, begging him to put her out of her misery.
He ground out, “Lily, if you want this, you’re going to have to take me.”
She didn’t hesitate. He was stunned at how quickly she shoved at his shoulders. He obliged her and fell back, sprawling beneath the magnificent blanket of stars overhead.
“You’re a bad, bad man, Carter Baigneaux, for teasing me like that.”
She threw her leg across his hip and he groaned as all that damp, hot female flesh came into direct contact with parts of him that needed no encouragement at the moment. “But two can play that game,” she purred.
He groaned as she rubbed herself blatantly against him but did not close the deal.
“Put your hands flat on the ground and keep them there,” she murmured. “And don’t move.”
He did so, pressing his palms hard against the rock until little bits of gravel dug painfully into them. Up and down his shaft she slid, tantalizingly close to taking him, but oh, so far away. His gaze narrowed, but thankfully, her breath was coming in shorter and shorter gasps, nearly matching his for desperation.
She babbled, “This is incredible… Oh, my…I’ve never…not like this…” Her hips rocked faster and he began to fear that he was going to crack a molar from clenching his teeth so hard together to hang on while she pleasured herself. Somewhere in the recesses of his lust-hazed mind he registered that she was the most erotic sight he’d
ever seen, her body writhing like a siren’s, her head thrown back in pleasure, her throat working convulsively as she groaned her pleasure.
And then without warning she lifted herself up and drove downward all in one swift, devastating movement. His entire being froze as her internal muscles clenched him, squeezing and releasing hard and fast around him.
Not now. Surely, his subconscious wasn’t so cruel as to give him a seizure now. Panic roared through him. But as his entire body clenched, fighting for self-control, it dawned on him that this felt different. The wrenching agony that usually accompanied one of his freeze-ups was absent. Instead, blinding pleasure was rolling through him in wave after wave.
Lily drove him mercilessly, insisting he come with her on this journey into magnificent lust. She rode him slow, then fast, easy and then nearly painfully hard. She keened out her pleasure once. Twice. A third time. And all the while he cursed and clutched at the rocks beneath him, doing his damnedest to ride the storm to its very last breath of pleasure.
Finally, it was too much for him. She was too much for him. Carter had to move now or die. And shockingly, his body responded. His hips surged up off the ground, meeting her thrust for thrust, slamming into her all the way to her core. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders and her dark hair tossed around them wildly. She was as much a part of the night as the galaxy spinning majestically over her head, and he consumed every last bit of her.
The explosion built so deep within him that he hardly knew its source. With a final climactic thrust, he reached up and grabbed her hips, dragging her down to him with a hoarse cry wrung from the depths of his being. She matched his shout, her release convulsing around him, milking his body and soul until he was so wrung-out that he couldn’t breathe.
She collapsed upon him, her body small and light on his. They lay together, breathing in ragged gasps for long minutes. Gradually, she transformed from a powerful sorceress imbued with all the dark power of the night into the light-filled fairy being from before.
He was, quite simply, blown away.
Eventually, she mumbled in a small voice, “Are you all right?”
