by Lora Leigh
Thick, heavy lather streamed down his back and buttocks, sliding down like a lover’s caress before slipping to the floor of the shower.
Bailey reached out, touched the glass as though she could actually feel the warmth of his flesh, and felt the need exploding inside her. Just to touch him, to taste him, to kiss the bronzed flesh and feel the flex of muscle beneath. To feel him against her, inside her.
She licked her lips as he stepped beneath the water once again, the suds flowing down his body, disintegrating beneath the force of the water as she slid the shower doors open.
He had known she was there. She watched him tense as she entered the cubicle and glimpsed the heavy length of his erection.
Warm flesh met her palm as she reached out and touched the flexing muscles of his back. His head lowered beneath the spray, one hand reaching out to brace against the wall.
“Wrong time, Bailey.” His voice was rough, guttural. “Go back to bed, baby.”
She paused, hearing something in his voice that she had never heard before, something she had only sensed in him a few times in Australia. Those had been the times he had simply disappeared a day or so before returning with his familiar, ever-present smile.
“Go back to bed?” She slid the door closed behind her, enclosing them in the heated moisture of the shower.
His other arm rose, his hand bracing against the shower wall as he drew in a hard, deep breath.
“Why would I want to go back to bed?” She let her fingers trail down the tense muscles of his back. “What are you hiding from me, John?”
She knew parts of what he was hiding. He was hiding who he was, what he was. He was hiding the man he had been, not just the man he was.
“Maybe I’m trying to protect you.” His voice was a rough growl.
She stared at his profile. His eyes were closed, his thick, long lashes spiked from the water as he obviously fought for control.
“It’s too late to try to protect me,” she whispered as she leaned her head against his shoulder. “And protection isn’t what I want from you. It’s not what I need from you.”
Before she could finish, he moved. One arm snaked around her waist, jerking her in front of him before he pressed her back into the shower wall.
His expression was tight with lust, his gray eyes nearly black with it. The erection that pressed against her belly was steel-hard, iron-hot.
Water flowed around them now, washing between their bodies, over their shoulders, enclosing them in a heated world of hunger and need.
She reached out to the side of the shower cubicle, her fingers closing around the bottle of shower gel that sat on the narrow shelf.
“Don’t, Bailey.” His arm tightened around her back as she snagged the clean cloth hanging on a ring to the opposite side.
“Don’t what?” she asked as she felt his cock throb against her lower belly. “Don’t be here with you, John? Don’t touch you when you can feel everything you want or need slipping through your fingers? Or are you just too damned scared to reach out and touch it?”
She poured the soap onto the washrag, staring into his eyes as she worked up the lather. There was something tormented, something desperate in his gaze as he stared down at her.
“Don’t you want me, John?” she asked him then. “Did you ever truly want me?”
There was an edge of pain in her voice, a shadow of it haunting her gaze, as though she were asking not just about the present, but a past she couldn’t know that they shared.
John stared down at her, feeling the dark, overwhelming lust that rose inside him for this woman. It was a hunger, a need he had always had to force himself to combat. From that first meeting with her, from their first kiss, it had risen inside him like a fire he couldn’t control.
It had been like this before. There had been times in Australia that he’d had to simply walk away from her, to put distance between them as he fought the unfamiliar hunger that he couldn’t name and sure as hell didn’t understand.
It had grown worse, he admitted. Five years ago, it had been like an ache he couldn’t put a name to. It wasn’t an ache now; it was a tide rising inside him, filling every part of his senses and demanding more from him, from her, than he had ever expected.
Being someone else hadn’t helped. He had thought it would. He had believed that coming here as John Vincent rather than Trent Daylen—working with her on his terms, with the knowledge between them that when the mission was over, they were over—would ease the desperation inside him.
It hadn’t. In ways, he believed it had only made it worse. She looked at him as though she knew who he was, what he was, and he couldn’t allow her to ever know.
Tightening his arm around her he jerked her to him, felt her indrawn breath, and watched the excitement that lit her green eyes.
“You should have stayed in the bed,” he growled as he felt that hunger ripping through him.
“Why, so you could stay in control?” The rasp of the lathered cloth moved over his shoulder as her nipples stroked against his chest with every breath she took. They were silken fire against his chest, burning into his flesh with sensual destruction.
“Control can be a good thing.” He proved his point by pressing a thigh between hers and pressing it tight against the heated mound of her sex.
He could feel the heated slide of her slick juices, feel them searing his skin as she drew in a hard, deep breath.
Taking the cloth from her hand, he shoved it back into its ring, then caught her wrists, placing them in one hand and holding them over her head.
“What are you fighting, John?” she whispered. “Me? Or yourself?”
He stared at her, wondering himself what he had always been fighting, even though he knew. He had fought the bonding, the need, the hunger that he was trying to hide from now. The certainty that life without this woman wasn’t worth living.
It was the reason he had tried to leave her in her bed, alone and escape to the shower. To hide from himself. To escape the need to give her more than he had thought he had to give to any woman.
“You don’t know what you’re doing to me, Bailey,” he rasped. “You don’t know what you’re doing to both of us.”
She was breathing heavily, her breasts rising and falling against his chest as he moved back from her slowly. But not to let her go. Hell no. There was no letting her go now.
“What am I doing to us, John?” Her soap-slick hands flexed within his grip as her hips arched to press his cock tighter against her belly.
“Destroying us?” he asked her softly, because he knew that was exactly what she was doing. Destroying them, one soft caress, one heated kiss at a time until he could feel his soul unraveling.
“Destroying us? How can touching you destroy us worse than this situation could?”
The question of the ages, a question he couldn’t answer because no other thought could penetrate the hunger growing inside him.
His head dipped, his lips taking hers in a kiss that only fueled the flames tearing through him. Looping her arms around his neck, he gripped the back of her head to hold her in place and fought himself, fought the impulses tearing through him.
It was like fighting a demon inside his soul. It refused to allow him any peace, refused to release him.
And this was the part of himself that he hadn’t wanted her to see. The dominance, the hunger, the sheer desperation for her touch that ruled his every sense.
“Damn you, I warned you not to be here,” he growled, fighting back the hard rumble in his voice, a flavor of an accent that he didn’t dare allow her to hear.
Throwing his head back he gripped her hair, moved her lips to his chest, and fought back the compulsion to simply take her.
Her hands caressed from his neck to his chest, then to his abdomen. The muscles of his stomach clenched almost violently at the feel of her silken fingertips tickling over them, moving lower.
Breathing in roughly, he stared down at her now, watching as he guid
ed her head, watching her go lower, her swollen lips working over his chest, brushing his hard male nipples before angling to his abs.
As though she moved in slow motion, each caress took forever and seared into his soul as he watched her. Her lashes lifted, beaded with water that made her green eyes brighter, more brilliant than ever before.
“You know what I want,” he groaned. “Give it to me, Bailey.”
His fingers fisted in her hair as he pressed her lower and felt her hot breath against the swollen crest of his cock. Her fingers gripped the shaft and held it along his lower belly.
Violent sensations of pleasure racked him at the feel of her moist breath, the knowledge that her lips were so close, that pleasure was just a breath away.
She stared up at him, watching him, snaring his will with her gaze as her head moved lower, her lips parted, and the sweet, heated caress of her mouth struck a bolt of ecstasy hard and deep inside the taut sac of his balls.
“Fuck.” One hand slapped against the tile shower wall as he blinked water from his eyes. “Suck me.”
Her lips closed over the brutally sensitive crown as her tongue swiped over it, caressed it and stole his mind. He could barely maintain a semblance of control, so fiercely did the pleasure resound inside him.
God help him. He needed her in ways that he didn’t understand himself. He needed to possess her, to own her sexuality, her sensuality. Her heart.
His hips jerked, driving the iron-hard crest deeper into her mouth as her cheeks began to flex and the suckling motion of her mouth sent white-hot flares of sensation tearing through his senses.
There was nothing else quite like Bailey’s lips at his cock, sucking him into her mouth, taking him with an intimacy, a silent promise that weakened any resolve he had to hold himself distant from her.
He could do nothing but let the lust have its way now. She stripped him of control. She had followed him when he had warned her to stay away. She had continued touching him when he had warned her she might be getting more than she was bargaining for.
Need was like a ravening beast inside him now. It was a hunger he couldn’t hold back.
He watched as she took the head of his cock into her mouth, laved it with her tongue, sucked him deep within her hot little mouth.
His hand clenched tighter in her hair as he fought to hold back the impulse to spill his release in that moment. God knew he wanted to enjoy this. The feel of her sweet mouth, so hot and snug as she sucked at the crown of his cock.
The sight of her, lashes half closed, lips reddened from sucking at him; the sight of his cock thrusting shallowly between her lips. It was the most erotic vision of his life. Bailey had the ability to do that. To make each encounter with her more erotic than the one before.
Fire whipped over his nerve endings, surrounding his cock and tightening in his testicles. The muscles of his thighs were so tight they ached, his arms bulging as he fought to hold on to just enough control to enjoy this a few moments longer.
To feel her mouth suckling him, her silken palm cupping his balls as she moaned against his overly sensitive flesh.
It was destroying him. He watched the shallow thrusts he made between her lips, the way her expression shifted, the pleasure on her face.
“Sweet Bailey,” he groaned as her tongue swiped over his dick. “Ah love, you’re destroying my control.”
She was destroying him, inside and out. He couldn’t hold on. He could feel the need boiling in his veins, his cum rising through his cock.
He couldn’t hold on. His fingers clenched tighter in her hair, his teeth clenched, and before he could pull back, a shattered groan tore from his throat.
His release tore from him. He felt it shoot from the tip of his cock, filling the inside of her hot mouth as he felt her take him, swallowing the essence of him. He groaned her name, not caring how it sounded or what it gave away.
All he cared about was Bailey and the arousal that kept him brutally hard. As her tongue gave another long, delicious lick over the head of his cock, he pulled back, jerked her to her feet, and lifted her to him.
Bailey cried out in surprise and pleasure as she was lifted against John’s chest. His head lowered, his mouth covering a hard, sensitive nipple before sucking it into his mouth. Wicked hot and brutally ecstatic, each hard draw of his mouth sent shards of sensation striking through her womb before it wrapped tightly around her swollen clit.
She could feel each stroke of his tongue over her nipple, first one, then the other, as he kept the firm, suckling pressure on the tip.
Her head fell back on her shoulders as she gripped his hair and fought to hold on. To keep him to her, just for a little while. To make enough memories to hold her through the rest of her life, to keep her warm at night when he was gone again.
“Fucking beautiful,” he groaned as his head lifted.
Pressing her back against the shower wall, Bailey felt his lips move lower. She felt his tongue between her breasts, running down her belly. As he dropped to his knees in front of her and spread her thighs, his lips moving to the swollen, distended bud of her clit, Bailey felt her senses exploding.
Heated water showered around them as the hot warmth of his mouth surrounded her clit.
His tongue was velvet heat as it licked around the swollen bud, worked it against the underside, and laved it with hungry strokes.
He kissed it. Sucked it inside, then licked again and again, until Bailey was fighting to hold back her screams, pleas that he give her what she needed, that he sent her spinning into the star-studded void she could feel awaiting her.
“John!” His name was a shattered cry on her lips as his tongue stroked, his lips sucked. His fingers moved between her thighs, two sliding high and deep, filling her, working inside her with tight, heavy strokes.
He stretched her, burned her as he filled her. Bailey spread her thighs wider, panted his name, and fought to breathe just enough to make sense of the sensations tearing through her.
It hadn’t been like this before. It had never been this hot, this vibrant before and she found herself at once frightened and exhilarated by the sensations tearing through her.
Excitement wound in her chest. Blood thundered through her veins. Pleasure tore through her senses.
She couldn’t hold on to her senses like this. Was she supposed to? Was anything supposed to be this good, this hot?
Pleasure wound inside her, tightening in her womb, her pussy, swelling her clit and sending pulses of sharp electric sensation tearing through her.
Bailey felt her hands latch into his hair, her nails digging into his scalp as the tension escalated, tightened, and exploded into a starburst of rapture so sharp and intense that her knees weakened, her legs collapsed.
And he was there. John caught her, held her close to him, lifted her as he wrapped her legs around his hips and pressed the heavy tip of his cock into the violently sensitive tissue beyond.
“Ah yes.” Her lips moved to his shoulder, his throat. “Oh God, John. Like this. Just like this.”
Hard and deep. There was no control left for either of them. His hands cupped her rear, his fingers clenched there as he began to thrust inside her. His groans and her cries filled the shower, wrapped around them, bound them.
She could feel the bond as it began to tighten, felt it settle inside her, tighten through her as her orgasm rushed over her again.
She tightened around his thrusting flesh. Her legs gripped him harder, her fingers dug into his hair and her back arched as she felt his lips at her neck. And she felt his release. Unbidden, unsheathed, his cock throbbed, swelled, then sent his seed spurting deep and hot inside her.
Bailey’s eyes flared open to stare into his eyes. Feeling the last pulses of his release, the last echoes of her orgasm, their gazes connected, held and they both stared into the face of reality.
It wasn’t the release, it wasn’t that she wasn’t protected, because she was. Bailey didn’t leave her protection in any man’s hands.
It was the knowledge that this intimacy had never been shared with another. Not even Trent.
She had felt this, known this. She had never given this to another man, until now.
John held something Trent hadn’t.
Her soul.
CHAPTER 11
MARY GREER’S MOUNTAIN cabin was a twenty-five-room three-story mansion set in a pristine valley surrounded by aspen, oak and huge fir trees. A large lake bordered one side of the property while stables and a snowmobile shelter bordered the other. A huge evergreen garden maze stretched out behind the house, while the front and side were reserved for the driveway and a multicar garage.
Limos were lining up in the huge circular driveway as the Serborne vehicle pulled in. Chauffeurs, butlers and housemen were carting luggage into the house and following the directions of Mary’s excellent staff in the placement of guests and their possessions.
There were more than two dozen couples attending. Invitations were much sought after and prized, even among the social elite who spent most of their winter in Aspen.
Dressed in winter-white cashmere pants, sweater and long coat, Bailey allowed John to help her out of the limo two days later as she stared up at the imposing structure overlooking them and wondered once again whatever possessed these people to live their lives as they did.
Bailey would be bored silly within two weeks and she knew it. A life of balls, parties, social luncheons, and shopping had never been her thing, as she’d proved when she left home just after she turned eighteen.
It had been her mother’s life, though, as well as that of her mother’s friends. They had lived for the next party, the endless rush of social functions and were crushed if invitations to their own weren’t accepted.
Security had been doubled from previous years, Raymond had assured her on the phone that morning. Every precaution had been taken to make certain that there would be no risk to her.
Bailey was beginning to believe that Raymond was truly upset over the attempt to kill her the week before. He had placed a security team outside her cabin, while inside both John and his bodyguard Travis ensured her protection.
