And then she froze.
Chapter 9
What was she doing?
Erin moved to jerk away, but at that exact moment, Zander’s arms came down around her, his hands skimming over her shoulders. The feel of his large, warm palms against her skin was almost more than she could process, and she let her eyes flutter shut, drawing in the strength of him for just…a few…seconds…
She must have sighed a bit more deeply than she’d intended, because Zander’s chuckle drifted over her. “Yeah, well. My body certainly didn’t forget you either.”
There was no rancor in the statement, not even regret, really, but Erin felt judged anyway. She tensed. “Sorry, Zander, I didn’t mean—”
“Shhh.” He was moving his hands now, rhythmically, and he leaned down until his mouth was just at the back of her ear. When he spoke, she could feel his lips brushing against the delicate skin, and everything inside her seemed to collapse, the years they’d been apart melting away, and suddenly the need she always felt with Zander was so intense that it blocked everything else out but the touch of his lips against her skin. “You’re trembling, Erin,” Zander whispered. “Do you not like this?”
“What? No, I…oh.” She clamped her mouth shut as he trailed a kiss down the column of her neck. His hands were moving too, no longer on the outside of her arms, but slipping along her narrow torso, the fingers stretching out, caressing the sides of her breasts through her shirt. She didn’t remember this feeling so good! But Zander was saying something else and she shook her head, trying to focus. “What?”
“I asked what you were thinking,” Zander said, his words rumbling hot against her neck as his hands pressed against her waist, slid along the slight curve of her hips. He’d always loved to do this, to trace the lines of her with his hands, as if he couldn’t quite believe there wasn’t more to her. But now as his fingers traced the edge of her shorts, flicking against her thighs, she couldn’t help but shiver. “That’s okay,” he murmured again when her mouth opened and closed, words still not coming out. He moved his hands over her belly, chuckling as she gasped. “I think I get the idea.”
“We really—oh.” Erin promised herself—promised—that she would be returning to coherence soon, but apparently not at exactly this moment, because Zander’s fingers drifted up, up, over her ribs and along the satin cups of her bra, searing the tender skin beneath with heat and pressure, and the knowing, firm movements of hands that were stronger, tougher, more calloused than she remembered, but still 100 percent Zander James.
“God, you feel so good,” he practically groaned, the sound driving straight through Erin and making her weak-kneed with want. She didn’t want to lead him on, didn’t want him to think any of this meant anything other than two people who’d known each other once and who were now back together for the briefest of spans, that it had nothing to do with loving or liking or even wanting to be in the same room as the other beyond this moment—but oh, this moment…
Zander shifted back, just enough, and Erin turned in his arms. He looked down at her, his eyes stormy, and the same unreal fire that seemed to blaze between them yesterday blew up once more. She stood on her tiptoes, stretching toward him. Again, he met her more than halfway—only this kiss was nothing like yesterday’s.
No, this time he pounced. There was no other way to describe it. He didn’t take her mouth so much as attack it with the raw need of a man who was leaping for a lifeline. His tongue pressed inside her, full and wet, commanding her to arch her back and press herself more tightly against him. His hands were all over her, lifting and pulling her against him, handling her as if she weighed nothing, and before she even realized what she was doing, Erin raised her legs to lock them around Zander’s waist, holding him tight.
They’d done that before, of course—she’d been even smaller as a teenager, and Zander had the rangy kind of strength that could support her weight for a little while—but this time, he didn’t even stagger. If anything, he gripped her more fiercely and hauled her against him, swinging her around until her back was flat up against the wall, his body pressing against her, the clear evidence of his arousal hard and sure and so needed that she gripped what was left of his hair and pulled him closer, desperate for more.
“Zander,” she whispered, because he was rocking against her now, the hardest part of him creating an impossible friction with her shorts, the thin silk of her underwear, her desire for him so intense that she was afraid she was going to burst before they even got their clothes off. “Zander, you have to…I want to…”
“You don’t like this?” Zander asked again, and she blinked at him with eyes that weren’t quite focusing anymore. She caught the impression of a hard smile, intense, gray eyes, and then he pulled back away from her so that she clamped her legs hard around his hips, her back still against the wall but her sense of security shattered. “Hold on tight, now, Erin,” he murmured, and then she felt the first brush of his fingers against the vee between her legs. She jerked, her brain trying to focus on everything at once: her precarious hold on Zander, her butt braced against his upper thighs, her back pressed against the wall. Then his fingers once more sought the core of her, the hard flick of his fingers nowhere near enough pressure through two layers of cloth, and yet she was so desperate, so filled with need, that she almost came right there.
“Zander, please!” Erin’s hands flailed until her fingers connected with the bunched muscles in his powerful shoulders. Then his mouth was right at her lips again, her balance lost as she was forced to grip his hips even harder with her legs.
“You only had to ask, babe,” he murmured, and he slid his fingers beneath the loose cuffs of her shorts, pressing up, up, then grazing against the perfect point that had her arching with the sudden realization that she was already about to, that she was going to—too fast, too fast! She wanted to enjoy this longer!
He swooped in for a kiss, and Erin’s gasped “No!” was lost in the heat of his mouth. She shattered against Zander in a long, wracking shudder, momentarily blinded as he swayed with her body pressed tightly against his, the two of them one, his mouth stealing her breath and his body absorbing her trembling until finally she realized she was no longer braced against the wall but cradled in his arms, spent but nowhere near finished.
That had not just happened. She’d not just had her first freaking orgasm in a YEAR that involved another person, without even taking off her clothes.
Erin drew in a shaky breath and looked up at Zander, reading the satisfaction in his gaze, the satisfaction and the hunger, too. “I guess you missed me?” he murmured, and his voice was pure male contentment.
“Maybe a little,” Erin said, and she didn’t recognize her own voice, didn’t remember the need ever being so crystal sharp within her. She wriggled and he loosened his hold, finally, allowing her to slide down the length of his body. He was still hard and ready, and that gave her a confidence she normally wouldn’t—shouldn’t—have. This means nothing in the bigger scheme of things, she informed herself sternly. This is just you being selfish. But by God, she wanted to be selfish. For once in her life, she wanted to leave him begging for more. And she knew how to do it, too. Barely having made the attempt to date for the past few years, given school and work and the brownstone—and her leftover trauma from their breakup—Erin had instead funneled her frustrations into reading every sex article known to man, her fantasies on overdrive with images of Zander. And damned if she didn’t want to put some of those fantasies to the test. Like right now.
“You did a pretty good job, I gotta admit, considering I was still fully clothed,” she said, grateful for the gathering gloom as she shucked her T-shirt and bra, then unbuttoned the fly of her shorts. Zander’s eyes popped as she kept going, pushing down her shorts and the damp scrap of silk that was all that was left of her thong. “What about now?”
He rushed her so fast, she almost didn’t see him move.
—
Zander had been a hair’s br
eadth away from completely losing his shit for the past fifteen minutes—hell, try three hours—watching Erin move, seeing her lips curve and her gaze skim over him when she thought he wasn’t watching. Now, the sight of her bare-ass naked in front of him well and truly put him over the edge. He didn’t even draw a breath before he had her in his arms, half carrying her, half hauling her through the studio and into the adjoining room which still—thank God—was her bedroom. She was flat on her back a second later and he was on top of her, kissing her ferociously as her fingers tried to get purchase on his shirt, to pull it up and over his abs. At the hiss of purely female pleasure beneath him, he looked down—only to see her staring at his stomach.
“What?” Zander leaned away and Erin batted at him, pushing him off her so that he rolled over on the bed. She immediately followed, and Zander almost blacked out as she straddled his hips again. Only this time, she most assuredly had no clothes on, and as she leaned forward to slide his shirt up his chest and over his arms, he had the sensation of her small breasts perfectly within reach of his mouth, his hands—and then she rocked back again, settling right against his cock, and he couldn’t breathe.
“My God, Zander,” Erin said, and there it was a second time. That sound of amazed admiration that he just—well, he’d heard it before, but not from Erin, not like that. He tried to picture what he looked like to her eyes and he really couldn’t, but he knew what she was reacting to. He’d bulked up since he’d been in the service. And the meat that was on his bones had now been beat to shit so many times that it’d become tough and hard. Erin pressed her hands to his pecs, drawing her fingers down, tracing the long, jagged scar he’d gotten falling down a ditch during a midnight maneuver—realizing immediately that he’d been pushed deliberately by his CO, to get him used to having to haul his ass out of a trench. They hadn’t discovered his injury until about three hours later, when Zander had almost passed out from loss of blood.
He’d gotten in trouble for not telling anyone, which had seemed the height of irony.
Now he was happy to have any number of scars on his body, if it meant this particular naked woman was going to be fascinated by them.
Erin’s fingers skimmed back down over his abs until they reached the waistband of his pants. She fumbled with the clasp, her face warming to pink as her fingers slipped the zipper down. “Erin,” Zander said warningly, though what he was warning her about he couldn’t say.
She glanced up at him, and he was struck again by the difference in her look. Erin’s body hadn’t changed all that much in the intervening years. She’d put on a couple of pounds, maybe, but only in the right places. Her curves had always been slight; now they were just that little bit more round. They fit in his hands as easily as before, but…they just fit better.
Still, there was something definitely new about Erin. She’d aged more behind her eyes in these past four years, as if she’d seen more than even he had. As if she’d somehow gone from being a quiet, pretty, but kind of an aimless teenager to a focused woman on a mission. A mission that, thankfully, involved him at the moment.
“You got any more scars I should know about before we go any further?” she asked, and her voice was different too, dropping down to a husky, throaty murmur that made his cock twitch, just inches away from her greedy fingers. She smiled. “I’ll take that as a no.”
Then she slid the zipper the rest of the way down, and pulled his pants and boxer briefs off with hands that he now realized were trembling, though he was way the hell too far gone to care. “Ahh,” she said, and she leaned down further, her ass now swaying in the air, her lips brushing his shaft.
Jesus H. He hadn’t had time for an actual relationship in over a year, and the places he’d found himself deployed hadn’t exactly been hotspots for any sort of female companionship, not even enough to get a good fantasy going on his own. But now Erin’s soft, supple lips were roaming all over his cock, her tongue darting out to trace long, swirling lines, her lips pursing to kiss, to nip, to take the tiniest inch of him into her mouth before sliding away, as if she was making out with him, but three feet south of his face. He reached for her and she just pushed him away, even though she weighed about three ounces and he could flip her in a blink if he wanted to.
But given what she was doing with her mouth…he was more than willing to cede control for the moment. He clenched the sheets in his hands when she finally closed her mouth over his cock and plunged down, only to draw up again, slowly, so slowly that he felt the sweat start to run down his temples.
“God, you taste so good,” she murmured, and he blinked, his eyes hazing over. When in the hell had she started to say that? And who had been teaching her?
That troubling thought was chased immediately away because Erin’s long, delicate fingers were repositioning now directly below his balls. As he felt her take him into her cool grasp, to press her fingers up firmly underneath him even as she slid her mouth up and down, up and down…
“Erin!” he gasped, trying to back away, to gain purchase on the smooth sheets. “Erin, baby, you gotta stop—”
“Shh,” she said, the vibration turning him inside out. She lifted her mouth away just long enough to spear him with another heavy-lidded glance. “Just let me do this, Zander,” she said. “I really want to do this.”
“Oh, you can, babe,” Zander said. At least he thought he said those words, as he sank back onto the bed and Erin returned her gaze—and her mouth—to the part of him that was aching for her so badly he wasn’t sure he would ever recover. Erin plunged down over him once, twice, and then the third time she did something fluttery with her fingers that caught Zander unawares, and the combination of sensations shot him right over the edge, so hard and fast that he felt like he’d lost total control of his body for several precious seconds. He gasped something that made Erin giggle madly—and then she lost her balance, slipping off the bed and hitting the floor in a tangle of sheets.
“Erin!” The thump of her landing brought him back to reality, but when he finally pulled himself half-upright she was already sitting up, wincing as if she was in pain. “Erin, are you okay?”
“I’m good,” her voice was still half giggle, but as her gaze swung around to him, something naked and unguarded flashed over her features, as if seeing him there, in the middle of her bed, unnerved her in some way. As he watched, her smile faltered, her demeanor shifting on a dime. Erin pulled a sheet up around her, then looked at him again with eyes that were now way too guarded for what had just happened between them. “So, um, we’re both good now, right?” she asked. “That was all good?”
What? “What are you talking about? Of course it was good.” Zander collapsed back on the bed, trying to get his head on straight again. He watched Erin stand and walk resolutely over to her bathroom door, then narrowed his eyes in confusion as she pulled a short robe off a hook and draped it over her shoulders, hiding her body away from him.
Zander felt a sharp twinge of betrayal. Oh, fuck no. Is that what was happening here? Had he really just—no way. She’d not just given him a casual blow that’d meant nothing to her, that wasn’t possible. There was no fucking way he’d missed Erin’s balls-out interest in him. No fucking way that he had somehow missed a real boyfriend, a girlfriend, a commitment to the church, or some other fucking reason that was now making her double-knot her robe with shaking hands and a determined smile. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, when would he ever learn?
“So, what gives, Erin?” he drawled, not making a move to get out of her bed. “You got somewhere else you need to be? Someone else you need to be with?”
Chapter 10
Erin tried to keep it cool, tried to process the image of the very large and very naked Zander lying in her bed, looking so good it was almost criminal. She glanced down again and determinedly kept her hands from tying a third knot in her belt. “No, not at all,” she said. “I wanted to see you. Wanted to…do that.” That and more, her body practically wailed. That and so much more. “But�
��I shouldn’t have. We broke up.”
“Uh-huh. And is this how you treat all the guys you break up with? Because you may want to let the new ones know that up front. It’s one hell of a perk.”
Zander’s voice was deliberately lazy, but it still had the effect of a slap. Erin brought her head up again, anger finally knifing through her mortification. “Don’t be a dick,” she snapped back. Ever since her conversation with Dani that morning, she’d fantasized about becoming the sort of femme fatale she’d read about—an independent woman taking her pleasure exactly the way she wanted it. Only, then she had. She’d just done exactly what she’d wanted to Zander, and she’d thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. But now, instead of feeling empowered, she was right back on the precipice of crazy, wanting so much more from him than he could possibly give—feeling so much more than she could ever allow herself to feel. Not for someone like Zander, so crazy and reckless that he’d just keep breaking her heart, over and over again. She’d already had a lifetime of that, after all. “I know you didn’t have to come over here, didn’t have to—”
“Didn’t have to?” Zander almost barked the words. “Fuck right I didn’t have to. And I didn’t come over here to trade information for a blow job, either. Jesus, Erin, I’d forgotten about this.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and grabbed his briefs and pants off the floor in one easy swipe, then pulled them on. To do so, he had to stand, giving Erin a perfectly exquisite though crushingly brief view of his tight, muscled ass and thighs. Thank God he couldn’t tell she was watching him, and by the time he turned around again she had her face composed.
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