He waited for her to scream, or try to scramble away, or at the very least smack the hell out of him.
Instead, she said in a small voice, “Oh.” She held her breath for a long moment before letting it out slowly. “Is it because of me, or just adrenaline from the fighting?”
Was she kidding?
“Sweetheart, it’s all yours,” he assured her.
The emotions arcing between them suddenly shifted from fear and comforting to something quite different…
He held himself very, very still.
Her fingers hesitantly kneaded his back and up his neck. Her thighs closed a little tighter around his hips. She turned her face toward his, and he could practically taste her delicious woman’s scent in his mouth.
Maybe it really was the battle raging outside, or the adrenalin zinging through his veins from the life and death situation they found themselves in the middle of…but he had a sudden, desperate urge to taste her.
He knew he shouldn’t. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was a man used to taking what he wanted, when he wanted it.
So, he lowered his lips to hers in the velvety blackness. She drew in a soft breath surprise.
But she didn’t pull away.
He licked the corner of her mouth, tasting her there, then moved up to the delicate bow of her lips and tasted her there, too.
A soft, breathy sound came from her throat. Her tongue peeked out and met his, tasting, darting back, tasting again.
With a groan, he covered her mouth fully and drank her in. She opened to him, and he was in heaven.
They kissed, and kissed. And kissed some more.
He told himself he should stop. Immediately. He was putting them both in danger with this reckless behavior. If those tangos returned, he’d be in big trouble. His concentration was totally shot, centered on one thing and one thing alone—her wet, welcoming mouth surrendering to his.
She moved against him, her hips lifting in unconscious invitation.
Okay, two things.
God damn it!
He tore his lips away from her with a growl. “Honey, you can’t possibly want this. You don’t even know me. This isn’t—”
Her fingertips sought his lips and pressed against them. “Shhh. I do want it.”
So he gave in, and just let himself float in the sensations she showered over him, and savored the explosion of pleasure in his senses. If he was going to die, damn, what a fine memory to go out on.
He felt her fingers sift through his hair and her thumb skim over the film of blacking on his cheekbone. Her body felt amazing beneath him, supple and curvy and hot for him.
There was nothing he wanted more than to sink into her and let himself go all the way.
Which was why he pulled back. “Baby, we need to slow down and think about this. Hell, you don’t even know my name.”
She tugged him down again, shaking her head. “No names. No thinking. I just want to feel.”
“And tomorrow? You’ll regret—”
“I know you’ll do your best,” she interrupted at a hush, “but even you have to admit, our chances of getting out of here alive are looking pretty slim.”
His heart lurched at the tremor in her voice, and he grappled for a lie. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to trust me. I swear, I’ll—”
“I know. I do trust you,” she murmured. The plaintive note in her appeal stopped the words in his throat. “And that’s why… Please, just do this for me.”
He hovered on the razor’s edge of need and want, the taste and feel of her already saturating his senses. He was just a man. And he wanted this woman more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
“Please,” she whispered. “I don’t want to die without knowing what it feels like to make love.”
Kiss of a Lifetime: Chapter Five
The enormity of Lacy’s declaration hung in the dank air of the closet for several long seconds. The man above her actually felt as though he’d stopped breathing.
She closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the fate of the moment. She embraced the darkness, within and without, and it wrapped itself around her in a blanket of odd, anonymous relief from the fear that had seized her to the core.
She knew she’d shocked the man, her brave rescuer. For that matter, she’d shocked herself. But it was true. She didn’t want to die without knowing a man’s touch.
At length, he murmured a heartfelt response. “Oh, sweetheart.” He ran his fingertips gently down her cheek. “What the hell am I supposed to say to that?”
Above them, another barrage of machine-gun fire shattered the silence. A high-pitched female scream shrilled through the air, followed by running feet and another scream, which ended abruptly.
“Don’t say anything,” she said, her voice trembling. “Just make love to me.”
“This is so wrong.” He gathered her close and rocked her slowly in his arms. “A woman’s first time should not be like this. You should have soft pillows and white sheets, and a man who loves you more than life itself.”
Her heart squeezed. He was going to say no. She couldn’t believe it. She’d been telling boys no all through high school and college, and now, when she so desperately wanted him to follow through, the boy—the man—was saying no.
“Earlier, you would have died for me,” she said weakly. “Is this so much harder to do?”
He made a choking noise. “God, no. It’s just—”
“Please, then let me make this choice. Before it’s taken away from me.” She didn’t even want to put into words the terrors the sounds around them had graphically sketched in her mind. If that horror was going to happen to her, she didn’t want it to be her first and only experience with a man before they killed her.
And if a miracle happened and they actually managed to escape this hell hole, well, she could live with the knowledge that it was what she’d wanted, and that this man was more than worthy of her.
He’d saved her life. He’d probably save it again before the day was through. He was honorable, too, trying to treat her with respect. The integrity he must possess even to consider turning down her proposition…it only made her more certain of her decision.
Not to mention…his body was killer. Nothing like the college boys she was used to dating. Muscles hard as oak and shoulders broad as a doorway, and yet his lips were soft as velvet. And he smelled…God, he smelled like a man, not a boy—all musky and spicy and sexy.
She might still be a virgin, but she knew what it felt like to be aroused. And she was. Totally.
She was wet and pulsing between her thighs, and her throat ached to taste him. If they’d been in the back seat of his car, she would already be naked.
She slipped her fingers through his hair, and pulled his face down to hers. Softly, tentatively, she kissed his lips.
The tense restraint of his muscles and the rasp of his breathing as he held himself above her spoke of the battle that still raged inside him. She could feel his heat and his potent desire for her cradled like a weapon of steel against her center.
He wanted her, too. There was no doubt about that.
Just as she longed to feel the first sting of possession as he thrust into her willing flesh.
She wanted this man, this stranger, this soldier of fortune.
She wanted him to be her first.
Apparently, she won the battle. His hand glided slowly up her thigh. Higher. And higher. She sucked in a breath, her body starting to quiver under the sizzlingly erotic touch of his fingers.
They grazed the edge of her panties.
No man had ever touched her there before. Not that she would have objected, if it had felt right to her then. But it never had. It had never felt like the right time, or the right boy. Something had always stopped her.
Until now.
“Are you sure?”
Now, it felt totally, exactly right.
Kiss of a Lifetime: Chapter Six
“Very sure,” Lacy whispered. She
was shocked by the intensity of the unfamiliar sensations she was feeling. She wanted this—wanted this man—with a desire that almost scared her.
“Tell me no, and I’ll stop,” he murmured. “Promise me you’ll tell me no if you want me to stop.”
Her body shuddered in response to his light touch on the crease of her thigh. It was like lightening streaking through her flesh.
Outside, the sound of gunfire faded.
“Promise me,” he demanded quietly.
“I promise,” she said on another gasp as his fingers made a quick foray under the lace.
“God, you’re so wet.” With a groan, he caressed her mouth with his, his tongue painting over her lips, around them.
At the same time, he shifted and reached up to unfasten the row of buttons running down front of her sundress. She caught his face between her hands and held his mouth to hers, unwilling to lose contact for even a second. His kisses became more intense as he struggled through the tangle of skirt bunched up at her waist. With a sharp tug, he ripped away the two last buttons and the dress slid away to each side.
The closet vibrated with his low, guttural growl as he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. His large, powerful hand closed around her breast, and the very air backed up in her lungs. It felt so good to be touched by him.
She forgot completely about guns and danger and death, and heard the sounds of war no more. All she was aware of were the exquisite sensations he awakened in her body with his rough, callused hands. The only sounds she heard were those of intense pleasure. Hers. And his.
She’d done her share of kissing in backseats, but it had never been like this. The adolescent gropings of her awkward classmates were not even in the same universe as being touched by this full-grown, virile male who knew just what he wanted, and exactly how to get it.
His thumb and forefinger closed around one of her nipples and rolled it between them. She arched like a bowstring and would have cried out if his mouth hadn’t been there to catch it first. His hand surrounded her other breast, and he dragged his thumbs back and forth over the beaded tips, back and forth, back and forth, until she thought she would die from the pleasure.
“Please,” she pleaded, rubbing up against him in her spiraling need. She’d never felt this on fire, this poised on the brink of something wonderfully powerful. This eager to experience the full measure of her body’s delights. And his.
“Sweet baby,” he murmured. “We have hours till dark, and I aim to use every minute of it to please you.”
She shivered in anticipation, in frustration, and moaned out a soft protest. But it caught in her throat when he scrunched down in the tight space and pressed his hot, talented mouth over one of her aching breasts. An explosion of feelings burst within her, brilliant in the darkness, and all she could do was surrender to him as he licked and suckled her, first at one breast, then the other, again, and again.
She was lost down a black velvet maelstrom of pure, mindless pleasure.
He tortured her, as surely as if he’d bound her hand and foot, with his sensual assault on every reachable inch of her body. She trembled and shook in helpless capitulation to the erotic power of his lips and tongue and hands. To the uncompromising male smell of him. To the feel of his broad shoulders and corded muscles under his sweat-dampened T-shirt.
His rough cotton fatigues scraped provocatively between her naked thighs. In her wildest fantasies she could never have imagined how good, how incredibly good, it could all be. Everything.
“I want to feel you,” she whispered, and tugged at his T-shirt.
He maneuvered it off and held himself above her as she ran her hands over his chest. A perfect masculine mix of skin and springy hair greeted her questing fingers. She read his torso like a braille sculpture, using the pads of her fingertips to explore the rugged geography of his chest and abdomen—the square, well-defined muscles, the thatch of hair that arrowed down into his pants, the lean waist, and finally back up to the flat male nipples that sprang to attention at her hesitant touch.
He grunted, and pinned her wrists to the wall above her head, claiming her mouth in a savage kiss, pressing skin to skin, chest to breast, making her hunger to feel his bare body against hers all the way down to her toes.
She rubbed against him, twining her leg around his thigh, grinding circles into his pelvis with hers.
“My God, woman,” he gritted out, “how have you managed to stay a virgin with moves like that on your man?”
Catching his earlobe in her teeth, she gave him a little bite. “Before today, I didn’t have any moves.” She lapped at his lobe until he groaned. “Because I hadn’t met a real man to use them on.”
A low rumble came from deep in his chest. Taking both of her wrists in one hand, he lowered his other hand between their bodies. She held her breath as he insinuated his fingers under her panties and brushed the back of his knuckles up and down over her center. With a moan, she felt herself blossom wide with a rush of moisture, unfolding and yearning for more explicit contact. His tongue delved into her mouth, mimicking the motions she knew would come soon, when he breached her body with his.
Her heart pounded double-time. She should have been frightened at what she was about to do. But she wasn’t. Not for a minute. Not in the arms of this incredible soldier of fortune and fantasy. She trusted him with her body. She trusted him with her life.
In a quick movement, he grabbed his knife, and she felt him cut the sides of her panties and yank them out from under her, tossing them aside.
“Spread your legs wide for me,” he urged hotly.
Excitement surged through her body.
Oh, God. This was really happening.
Kiss of a Lifetime: Chapter Seven
Lacy obeyed her lover’s command, shivering with anticipation.
His fingers slicked up her folds, teasing and driving her mad with desire. She struggled against the grip he had on her wrists, wanting to rip open his fatigues and touch and explore him, squeeze and torment him as he was doing to her. She finally slipped his grasp and reached for his zipper.
Recapturing her wrist, he laughed—a deep, buccaneer’s laugh, filled with sinful promise. “Oh, no, sweetheart. You’ll have to wait your turn. Next time, I’ll lie still and you can satisfy your curiosity on my grateful body, but this time—” His finger sank into the burning depths of her. “This time I’m in charge.”
She moaned, moving against his hand, craving his intimate touch. Striving in the darkness for a fulfillment she knew lay only in the sweet, wet joining of his male to her female.
She barely recognized herself in the wild, reckless creature writhing beneath the talented fingers of a stranger. But if she was going to die today, she wanted to do it with the memory of ecstasy clinging to her every pore.
“I wish I could taste you,” he whispered in her ear. “Here.” His forefinger gently stroked her clit.
A rich, searing ache shot through her center, lodging deep inside.
She felt herself blush. But now was not the time to hold back. “Me, too.”
“I assume you’ve…?”
“No,” she said, moving against his hand, and suddenly wondered why she hadn’t gone at least that far. “Never.”
He cursed. “Damn, woman. And damn this fucking sardine can we’re trapped in.” His thumb circled her, and his tongue flicked into her mouth. “We’ll just have to pretend. Imagine my mouth is on you. My tongue, my teeth.” He nipped her lower lip at the same time he pinched her with his fingers.
She gasped at the sensual effect of his whispered suggestions and his continued assault.
He tongued her firmly. He stroked her gently. He kissed and caressed her until she was a quivering pool of liquid need. She panted and moaned as his relentless fingers fondled, circled, and probed.
Higher and higher he took her until, at last, her body convulsed with a pleasure that shattered her with red-hot intensity. She grabbed onto him and held him close as he wrung sensation af
ter sensation from her shuddering body.
She’d never experienced such a high. There in his arms, she floated and soared, pulsing with every beat of a heart that was totally lost in this amazing experience and with this wonderful man.
When she was finally able to speak, she murmured, “You are completely, utterly incredible. I had no idea…this…could be so…incredible.”
He kissed a trail down the side of her throat. “You could inflate a man’s ego with talk like that.”
His hardness jutted into her thigh, seducing her to thoughts of even greater heights. She reached down to stroke a hand over the thick length of him under his fatigues. Good lord. She didn’t think they came that big. “Any more inflated, and I doubt it’d fit,” she whispered.
He let out a hoarse chuckle. “Maybe we should do it now, before it gets any bigger.”
Bigger? A nervous thrill traced up her spine and she popped the top button on his pants. “I assume you’re kidding.”
“Baby, I never kid.” He dug through the pockets of his ammo belt, and she heard the telltale rustle of a wrapper. And more rustling. And more.
“What are you doing?”
“Damn foreign things,” he muttered under his breath, yanking at something in his hand. “Where’s my knife?”
By the time he’d solved the problem, she was so impatient she’d unzipped his fatigues and had them and his boxer briefs halfway down his hips.
Holy crap. Thank God for the cover of darkness which hid the furious flush of heat that swept over her when she realized what she’d done.
What had come over her? This morning she’d been a normal college senior with a normal sexual appetite… Okay, so maybe a bit less than normal, if her friends were anything to judge by. But certainly not this wanton creature who thought only of having this sexy stranger deep inside her.
He gathered her up in his arms and settled into the cradle of her thighs. His arousal slicked against her, catching in the place where it sought entrance. Her pulse thrummed with excitement.
He took a long, even breath. “Sweetheart, we don’t have to do this. We’re safe for now, those soldiers won’t be back. And I swear, I’ll get us out of here alive. You have your whole life to find someone worthy of this gift.”
Lucky 7 Brazen Bachelors Contemporary Romance Boxed Set Page 23
