Wanting Hunter: Book 1 in the Cameron Family Saga

by Shirley Larson

  “Yes,” she said, afraid she’d stumbled into a place she shouldn’t have gone.

  Hunter wasn’t certain she was ready for this. Still, it seemed now was a good time to get this over with so that when they went to bed, she wouldn’t feel compelled to ooh and ah and express sympathy even while she was repelled by the sight of his scars as a few of his bed partners had been.

  Slowly, watching her, he began to unbutton his shirt.

  “I hope these badges aren’t in…X-rated places.”

  “All above the waist.” That slight smile taunted her just a bit.

  She wanted to stop him, wanted to say that’s okay, please don’t take off your clothes right now when I’m in a weakened condition and I might just attack you, but she didn’t. He shrugged out of his shirt and she nearly gasped. He had a huge angry scar running from his shoulder to below his belt line.

  While she thought about how much pain that injury must have caused, she struggled for something to say that would hit the right note between interest and sympathy. “That’s quite a badge of honor. How did you get it?”

  “Fell off a roof with a cupola landing on top of me.”

  “I don’t know what a cupola is but it must have been big and nasty.”

  “A cupola is a like a small room on top of a roof. This particular one had a glass window in it. It was the jagged piece of glass that gave me this.”

  “I’m…sorry. It must have been very painful.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he turned his back to her. “This was worse.” His back was scarred with dozens of tiny circles.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I was crawling under a house to examine the foundation and rolled over on a porcupine.”

  “Ouch,” she said, trying very hard not to smile.

  “Ouch indeed.” He turned back. “You aren’t laughing, are you?”

  “Well, yes, a little bit” she said, grinning. “I have to ask. Did the porcupine survive?”

  “Oh, yeah. She went home to her husband and when he saw her missing quills he said quite sternly, ‘you haven’t been pleasuring that handsome young construction man again, have you, my dear? This was awhile ago when I was young and handsome.”

  Liz laughed. “Oh, Hunter. You’re still young and handsome. And here’s my version. I bet that lady porcupine went home and said, ‘I’ve just had the most marvelous encounter, my dear. He was black haired and beautiful and I’m considering divorcing you.”

  While Liz continued to smile at him, Hunter said, “Do you think I’m black haired and beautiful?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “You have to know you are.”

  “Do I?” He turned away from her to shrug into his shirt and button it up. “I hope you like your burger well done and fries crisp.”

  She’d been too frank. She’d made him go all impersonal again. But maybe it was just as well. “Yes, on both counts.”

  He went to the warming oven and served her the burger on a red plate along with the fries. Then he fixed his own plate and came around to sit next to her at the bar.

  Okay. She could do this. She could sit beside Hunter Cameron and eat and it would be all right. She just hoped she hadn’t offended him. But really, how could he be offended when she’d told him he was beautiful?

  “So,” he said. “Where are your scars, Liz Farnsworth?”

  She hesitated, thinking of the many rejections at auditions, the many roles that had gone to someone else. She wasn’t ready to share those scars with Hunter. Besides, he might think it was silly to be hurt when that was the way of the theater. “Inside where you can’t see them,” she said. And then there was her father who danced in and out of her life. And her sister who seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth. She took a bite of her burger and the juice ran down and out of her mouth. Before she could reach for a napkin, he had one in his hand that he pressed against her chin. “Oh, thank you. I just…oh, this burger is heaven.”

  She was a woman who enjoyed her food so much she let the juice dribble down her chin. Damn, she was killing him. How much longer could he keep up this big brother act?

  “Anyway,” she said between bites, “I have a proclivity for broken bones. I broke my arm when I was four, falling down on an icy sidewalk. Not too long ago, I went sprawling on stage in front of several hundred people and broke my elbow.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “We were doing Man of La Mancha and I tripped over the ladder that had been lowered into the pit. Eight million times I’ve walked in front of that ladder and the night before we close, I trip on it.”

  “I’m guessing that wasn’t your finest hour.”

  “You might say that.”

  “Which elbow was it?”

  “This one,” she said, pointing to her left arm on the other side from where he sat.

  “I’m sorry that happened.”

  “I am, too.” She took another bite of her burger. “I was in the chorus at the time so my medical wasn’t covered entirely. Not only did I make a fool of myself, I had to pay out money, too. I hate paying out good-earned money.”

  “Now you’re seducing me, Ms. Farnsworth.”

  “I am?”

  She gave him this adorable look, the one that told him she really didn’t understand what he meant.

  “A man who hears a female say she doesn’t like to spend money thinks he’s met the woman of his dreams and immediately wants her in his bed.”

  “Do you want me in your bed?”

  “What do you think?” He watched her through those dark eyes and she looked back at him, almost spellbound. Slowly, she laid her burger down. “I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

  “Wish I could say that.”

  She knew what he meant. He meant he was hungry for her. “I didn’t think it would happen like this. I thought I’d be in my red dress and you’d be in that tux you fill out so well. I didn’t think we’d both be in jeans and I’d be eating a lovely, juicy hamburger.”

  “But you did think it would happen.”

  Those beautiful green eyes turned up to him, so brilliant, so alive. “I hoped.”

  “Do you want to finish your burger?”

  “No,” she said, never taking her eyes off him.

  “Do you want me to carry you into the bedroom?”

  “I can walk,” she slid off the stool and stood on legs that had suddenly turned shaky.

  “Come here.” He lifted her in his arms and strode easily toward the door that stood open and the bed where she’d spent several hours a few days ago.

  He laid her down on top of the duvet. She went from willing to apprehensive in a nanosecond. “I don’t…I haven’t…”

  “Taken care of,” he said and opened a drawer beside his bed to pull out a condom and lay it on top.

  “Are you always so prepared?” she asked, knowing it was none of her business how prepared he was, knowing she had to know.

  “I bought these the day after the charity ball.” He shut the drawer and those large lovely hands went to the buttons of his shirt. She rolled over on her stomach as if she’d come for a slumber party and wanted to look at his high tech alarm clock. “Wow. So many ways to wake up.”

  He sat down on the bed and found the space on her back between her t-shirt and jeans and ran that sweet and lovely work-roughened hand up her spine. “Nervous?”

  “It’s been awhile.”

  “How long?”

  She rolled over, displacing his hand and looking him in the eye. “Nosy, aren’t you?”

  “You wanted to know about the condoms. I told you.”

  “Ten years,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving his face.

  “Ten years,” he echoed the words, thinking he didn’t know any other mature female who lived such an abstentious life.

  “I just…I tried it my senior year of college and it just seemed…not fun. I thought there was something wrong with me. Whenever I had the chance to try it again, I ran. There was a man w
ho…got tired of waiting for me to make up my mind and went his own way.”

  “So much for the myth of fast and loose actresses.”

  “Yeah. We’re busy learning lines if we’re lucky and scrambling to find the next job if we aren’t. I spent most of my time concentrating on doing anything I could to be a success on the stage.”

  “Would you rather not do this?”

  “I’m just…I’m not sure what you expect of me. Obviously I’ve never hung from the ceiling in handcuffs and leather.”

  “What a shame. That’s exactly what I had planned.” He smiled and she knew he was teasing her. “How about if you let me take the lead and you just lie there and enjoy yourself. If I do something you don’t like, you tell me and I’ll stop.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  “So. We’ll start with this.” He rolled her on her stomach again, and pulled her t-shirt off over her head. He began to massage her back, finding all the places that were tense, working around the band of her bra. She hadn’t realized how uptight she was, still not quite recovered from the trip to the war zone and the plane crash and not recovered at all from the attraction of Hunter Cameron. He reached under her and with her raising up to help him, unsnapped and unzipped her jeans. He stripped them off and left her in her panties. His hands roamed lower now, rubbing to the bottom of her spine, massaging the cheeks of her rear over the top of her silk underwear. The sensation was unbearably arousing, making her tingle and burn in places she’d thought were dead.

  “All right?” he murmured in that low voice.

  “Define all right,” she said, rolling over to gaze at him.

  “Not frightened?”

  “I was never frightened. Just afraid I’d look like a fool.”

  “You could never look like a fool. Not to me.” He placed his hand over her navel, flat on her belly, then slid it upward, taking her bra with him so that the cups were now above her bare breasts. The restriction of her bra band was still there on her upper chest. He covered her breasts with his palms, his eyes never leaving hers. She thought how erotic it was to be so exposed and vulnerable to him when he was still fully dressed.

  She said, “That feels…incredible.”

  His mouth lifted in that half smile. “I rather like it, too. Nice that we agree.” One hand stayed on her breast while the other slid under her panties and found her mound. Gently he moved his hand back and forth over her flesh, creating a sharp tang of sexual hunger. This was a glimpse of heaven she’d never had before. She closed her eyes, wishing for more. As if he knew what she wanted, he slipped a finger into her and touched her clit. She knew she was in the hands of an expert as he went on rubbing her and that stinging, roiling hunger nearly overcame her. She half rose up off the bed. “Take off my pants.

  “No,” he murmured, but he slid them down so that they were wrapped low around her hips, constricting her movement. Then his hand left her and she nearly cried out from the loss when he bent over her and stabbed his tongue deep in her core. She cried out, “Hunter, please, I don’t…

  He raised his head to fasten those blue eyes darkened with sexual need on her. “Do you want me to stop?”

  In that long silent moment, she looked up at him. “No,” she said.

  He gave her that satisfied half smile. “I didn’t think so.” He bent over her again and this time, he cupped her buttocks and lifted her up to his greedy mouth to take more of her. She was trapped by his hands, trapped by her pants wrapped around her thighs, trapped by her own hunger to take everything he gave. She offered herself up to him body and soul, and then when the shattering explosion burst inside her, she cried out his name and knew for the first time in her life what it felt like to climax.

  Chapter 11

  “Are you all right?” he asked again.

  “Yes,” she said, feeling as if the whole world had suddenly tilted and dropped her into a place she’d never been before. She sat up and tossed off the constricting bra, put her legs over the side of the bed and kicked out of her panties.

  “Your turn.”

  “My turn? I thought you were letting me take the lead.”

  “I was. I did. Now it’s your turn.”

  While he stood in front of her, she unbuttoned his shirt and when it was fully open, while his arms were still caught in his sleeves, she kissed his scar from top to bottom and for good measure, licked him with her tongue. His flesh was hot and tasted like soap. His skin seemed to shudder slightly under her tongue and he groaned softly.

  “All right?” she said anxiously.

  “Define all right,” he said in a strangled voice.

  “Now?” she asked, teasing him.

  “Liz. Just…keep going.”

  “Okay.” Slowly, she eased his shirt off. She unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. His feet were bare so it was just a matter of sitting him down on the bed and pulling off his pants and boxers.

  She pressed him back so that he lay stretched out in front of her. His penis was huge. She wasn’t all that experienced of course, but he seemed very, very big.

  Now. Now was the time to do what she had never done before. She crawled across him and straddled his thighs, bending her head to taste the silky top. He groaned slightly and she jumped back. “Wrong?” she asked, only mildly horrified.

  “Not enough,” he groaned.

  She leaned over him again, lapped at him. He seemed to like it. Encouraged, she licked him again. Then, knowing she wouldn’t be able to take him all in, she pulled him into her mouth, using her hand at the bottom to cover him all the way. He moved his hips, sending her signals that he enjoyed her efforts. Lick around the base of his penis head. Oh, he definitely likes that. Lick him up and down. He likes that, too. Take him into your mouth as deeply as you can and use your tongue along the sides. Poke the tip into that cleft under the head. Oh, yeah. He likes that a lot. If this was being a wanton hussy, it was way too much fun. So this was what sex was all about. Doing things with your mouth and hands to a man you cared for. Doing things with a man you admired. Doing things to a man who had enough self-confidence to let you take control. Why hadn’t anybody told her? Why hadn’t she known sex could be fun? And freeing?

  She was just getting nicely into the licking and the sucking when his two big hands caught her on each side of her head and brought her up and away.

  “You have to stop,” he said, his voice sounding strange to her sensitive ears, funny, choked.

  “Why? Was I doing it wrong?”

  “No,” he said, and she could swear he was trying to keep the laughter out of his voice. “You were doing it very, very right. I just don’t want my first climax with you to be that way.”

  “Oh,” she said, sitting back on her heels, glad she hadn’t been doing it wrong.

  “Could you just…reach in that drawer and get a condom?”

  She lay down on top of him and groped around for the condom. Of course, she knocked it on the floor. “Just be a minute,” she said, and reached down to get the condom, her lower body still lying on top of him as she wriggled around to reach the darn thing, “Got the little bugger,” she said, bringing it up with a look of satisfaction.

  He took it from her with that grin on his face.

  “What?”

  “I almost threw it on the floor and asked you to pick it up again.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I enjoyed the wiggling that went with the retrieving.”

  “What, you mean this?” She wiggled on top of him with the agility of the dancer that she was.

  “Oh, yeah, that.”

  She sat up to give him room to work on the condom, watching with fascination as he rolled it onto himself.

  “Why are you watching me so closely?”

  “I’ve never seen a man do that before.”

  “Didn’t your other lovers use a condom?” he asked.

  “They were college boys. They went in the bathroom.”

  “Ah. They were still a little b
it new at the job.”

  “In all parts of the job. They certainly never knew how to make me feel so…uninhibited.”

  “Want to stay on top?” He watched her so closely she knew she could only tell the truth. She said, “I’ve…never done that, either.”

  “It’s pretty simple. It works just like this.” He put his big hands on her hips and lifted her. “You guide it in. You know where it should go.”

  She took hold of him and thought how absolutely sexy this was, that she was holding him, feeding him into her body little by little. She hoped she could take him in easily and it seemed that she could. When he was fully into her up to the hilt, she went very still.

  “Are you all right?”

  “It feels…wonderful.”

  “You have no idea. We’ll take it slow.”

  She was already moving, lifting herself to slide up and down on him, slowly, very slowly. She was so full of him. Now the ecstasy began to build with each slide. She tried not to give in to the instinctive urge she had to move faster, but inevitably, she gave in and tortured him and herself with violent moves up and down, up and down until she cried out her fulfillment and he grabbed her shoulders in the throes of his climax and groaned out his pleasure.

  She collapsed on top of him, her breasts finding their place against his chest. His arms came around her. “Are you cold?”

  “Not yet,” she murmured.

  He knew as she didn’t that it wasn’t a good idea for him to stay inside her with the condom on. There was more risk of impregnation if he did. But the feel of her bare body against his was almost as wonderful as being inside her. He let her lay like that for a bit, loving the feel of her hair against his shoulders, the faint drift of her perfume. He’d been right to think that sex with her would be different than it had been with any other woman. But he had to admit she’d surprised him with her unabashed sexuality. He supposed it was possible she’d lied to him about not having any recent lovers. Did it matter if she had? He didn’t care what happened in the past. He only cared what happened in the future.

  “Liz.”

  “Hum,” she said sleepily.

  “You need to get up. I have to get rid of this condom.”