by Stacy Gail
She shouldn’t say anything. She wouldn’t.
Just let him go...
When Kyle knocked on the door of the trailer, she slicked her hair back. “I’m over here.”
Damn it.
Chapter Ten
Over the ceaseless hiss of the surf, Nikita could hear the helpless hammering of her heart as Kyle turned in her direction. That wasn’t surprising. With an instinctive knowledge as old as humankind, she knew why he was here, just as she knew she would allow it to happen. Not surprising, when those same instincts whispered to her in a low, insistent voice that it was time. At last, it was time.
It was so dark she could only see his silhouette, yet somehow she could tell the moment he zeroed in on her. He froze, as if her mere presence had somehow sucked away his ability to move. She couldn’t understand why that would be. She was nothing more than a smudge in the water, hidden from his sight, yet his reaction suddenly made her feel exposed, as if she had a spotlight on her. The secret place between her legs throbbed with an intoxicating heat. The sensitive tissues swelled until every muscle in her lower abdomen grew taut with delicious tension. If desire could cause madness, she was trembling on its knife-edged brink.
“Is there a problem I need to know about?” She tiptoed along the rocky bottom, while the urge to go toward him pushed at her in the same way the current swept her body along. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight.”
“You weren’t? Somehow that surprises me.”
She could just make out a subtle kicking motion from him. There went his shoes. “So? Is there a problem?”
“Not that I’d like to discuss right now.”
The pale shirt he wore moved up and over his head. The inner heat that had plagued her all night now threatened to make the water simmer around her. “You’re not here because of the case?”
His hand went to the fastening of his shorts. She only wished she had a few bills to flash for this private striptease. “No.”
“Oh.” Kyle’s tanned flesh, darker than the last of the clothes he tossed toward her towel, was impossible to see with any detail. But as he headed toward the water her mind filled in the blanks with devastating ease. The lustful pulse between her thighs grew to a sweet ache. “Then why are you here?”
“You know why, Nikita.”
Of course she knew. Just as she knew the unlabeled restlessness that had been tearing her apart had actually been impatience at having to wait for his arrival. Now that he was here, there was nothing left but an almost giddy anticipation. This moment had been a long time in coming—from the first moment she’d crossed paths with him so many years ago—and there was no escaping it now. She didn’t want to. She’d never been good at denying her earthier impulses, yet she’d always done so when it came to Kyle. It was as though part of her knew that sex with Kyle wouldn’t be satisfying a fleeting biological urge, but rather a life-altering experience she’d want again and again.
Wanting was fine. She just didn’t know how to make sure it stopped there.
Something flinched inside of her, a raw nerve that curled in on itself for protection. No, her desire could never be allowed to go beyond wanting. But living for this moment... That was all right. That was something she could do. And to hell with the rest of it.
As he closed the distance separating them, she could see him more clearly. The shark tooth hanging from his neck rested against a chest she’d explored countless times in her fantasies, complimented by his rib cage shadowed with muscle. His pectorals and deltoids were surprisingly well developed for such a leanly built man. Those sculpted ridges and curves drew her attention like magnets, her lips tingling in a hungry need to taste him there. A dark blond line of hair arrowed downward to his fully aroused sex, its crown dark and ready in the moonlight. But before she could inspect him further he dived, submerging completely.
“Kyle.” Startled by the unexpected move, she turned in the direction where she thought he’d reappear, then huffed when he didn’t. “Cabrón. You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
Silence answered her. Soft waves rippled against her, tugging her with gentle pressure toward the shore as the seconds ticked by. He should have surfaced by now. Unease began to mingle with her irritation. Maybe he was in trouble. He should have—
A squeak erupted from her when something brushed her back. She whirled with a splash even as her inner thigh was grazed, then her left butt cheek. Teasing. Delicate.
Impossible to see.
“Kyle!”
A splash to her right was the only warning she got before an arm looped around her waist. She turned to see he’d surfaced with a wicked smile, his teeth a white flash in his night-shadowed face. “What the hell—”
“I told you, I’ve finally figured you out.” He swam an idle circle around her, holding her so that she pivoted with him. “Taking you by surprise is the one true way to slip past your defenses. Not that you’ve ever needed them with me.”
“I’ve always been available to you.” Her heart thudded so hard it was a miracle she was still conscious. “I like sex. You’re the one who always backed off.”
“Hell, yeah, I did. Because I don’t want sex with you, Nikita.”
She clamped her mouth shut before her smartass tendencies compelled her to ask what he did want. She knew. And it was the one thing that had held her back for so long. When it came to Kyle, it could never be as simple as mere sex, because it had never been an ordinary lust churning beneath the surface. It was complex and emotional and jumbled—basically everything she didn’t want. She’d have to have rocks in her head to want a relationship where feelings and biology got tangled up, only to leave her a twisted-up mess.
And yet, here she was. A train wreck about to happen. She would have stopped it if she knew how.
“Listen to that silence.” That white slash of a smile in the gloom grew. “Don’t you have an answer for that, my Nikita? Don’t you want to know what I want with you?”
“No.” She lifted a hand to press the wet fingertips against his mouth. “Don’t tell me.”
“But I want to.” As sinuous as a seal, he brushed against her so that his chest teased the sensitized tips of her breasts. “I want everything of you. I want the taste of you on my tongue so I can lose myself in it. I want to know you’re savoring the flavor of my body just as deeply. When you need to be touched, I want you to come to me because no other hand will do. I want you to give me your mouth because you can’t stop yourself from drowning in my kiss. I want to be the dream you can’t wait to have, and the fantasy that makes you hot. I want to be your greatest need, your favorite memory and the one thing you can’t live without. Sex? That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Hunger bloomed, so crushing it was like a fist closing around the part of her brain that could still think. God knew she didn’t want unreliable concepts like always and forever mucking up her life. There was no such thing as forever, not when it came to human beings and their perpetually screwed-up ways. But she wanted Kyle, more than she’d known she could want. That was all she needed.
His mouth was like a custom-built bit of heaven made just for her. Wet and salty from the ocean, he melded his lips to hers as if he believed they could successfully be fused together if he could only perfect the seal. The jousting of his tongue was both artful and demanding, an unsubtle mimicry of what he wanted to do with her body. The invasive rhythm only heightened the urgency thrumming in her blood, and with a broken moan she wrapped her arms and legs around his solid frame.
A shudder whiplashed through him as naked flesh pressed together in one long line. His arousal thrust between her thighs, tantalizing her with a desire almost realized. Blindly she shifted her hips, a deliberate stroking of her intimate cleft against that steely hardness. A fleeting burst of delight streaked through her, and the sensual heat deep within her began to burn.
A gasp shuddered in her throat at the same time a harsh noise escaped Kyle, as if something had shattered inside him. It thrilled her, that hint of helplessness, and with an eagerness she couldn’t hide she reached down to guide him into that empty space aching to be filled with him.
Before she could do little more than graze his hot length, her wrist was suddenly ensnared in the gentle prison of his fingers.
“Too much.” The words were ground out between short breaths, as if he were already gloved inside her and losing control. His face nuzzled hers, his teeth nipping her lower lip, her chin, the line of her jaw. Any second he was going to devour her, and she couldn’t wait. “Too soon. We do this my way.”
“I like my way better.”
“Instant gratification? I have ways of giving you that. You might say I have a magic touch.”
Her heart jumped giddily. “Show, don’t tell.”
“Maybe later.” With his arms coming to wrap beneath her bottom for support, he began walking toward the shore. “Scratch that. Definitely later. I plan on blowing every circuit you have. But first we do it my way.”
“Bossy men are such a turn-off.” But there was no way she could be turned off when she could feel all of him with all of her. She tightened her legs around his waist as he made it to where she’d left her towel, holding onto him as he sank to his knees. He pushed their scattered clothes out of the way before he let gravity take over, and as the plush terry cloth of the towel pressed against her back his mouth slid to her neck. The wet suction of his mouth worked like a spell on her, leaching away common sense and filling her with nothing but him. She arched into him, greedy to tease both his senses and hers as her nipples stroked against the wall of his hard chest.
A rough purr of encouragement rumbled from him, and without pause his hands roamed up her torso beaded with seawater to capture the subtle mounds of her breasts. Sensation seeped through her, dragging a broken breath from her, and all she could do was press a hand over his so that the nipple was abraded by his palm.
More.
Until that moment, she’d thought she’d known the limits to her body’s responses. But under the masterful touch of Kyle’s hands, her nerve endings stormed into jittering overdrive. She was so sensitive wherever he touched that it brought tears of sheer beauty to her eyes, and she could do nothing more than wallow in the unexpectedness of how completely different it was to be touched by him. She closed her eyes to better savor the slow way he kneaded the globes of her breasts, his thumbs rubbing over the peaks with a maddening relentlessness. His mouth soon joined the sensual onslaught, and her legs opened wider as he slid further down her body, the friction of skin on skin that dried rapidly from the savage heat of arousal. That heat threatened to flare out of control when his mouth closed on a sensitized tip and sucked, while his teeth and tongue weaved together a world of lush sensation. Liquid fire pulsed from her hidden slit, enough to coax her pelvis up to his in a blind need to fill her emptiness.
If he didn’t join his body with hers soon, she’d lose her mind.
The pulse of her hips rubbed his stiffened flesh, and it loosed a hungry growl from him that thrilled her. Before she could wring another one out of him, however, he shifted to avoid that teasing caress. To ensure she stayed where he wanted her, he glided an exploratory hand down to her belly, where it paused to toy with the charm she had hanging from her pierced navel.
“Mine,” she thought she heard him whisper. Gently he tugged at the body jewelry, a sharp little zing that made her breath catch before a laugh escaped her. That laughter melted almost as soon as it began as the backs of his fingers lazily smoothed over the delicate skin that stretched between her navel and the fine veil of curls hiding her intimate core.
So close. So close...
His mouth journeyed from one thoroughly ravished breast to the other, and as he traced the areola with a bold sweep of his tongue, his hand delved into the exploration of her damp sex. A rapturous jolt went through her as his questing touch slid over flesh now hotly swollen and aching with the force of her desire. When she tilted her hips up to seek greater satisfaction, she felt more than heard his low chuckle.
“I love the eagerness, Nikita. But you’re not ready yet.”
Was he serious? Any more ready and she’d have cardiac arrest. “If you think that, you’re not as experienced as I thought. Is this going to be like amateur hour—or amateur five minutes, as the case may be?”
“You can tell me that for yourself when we’re done. If you can still talk.”
Oh, boy. “Promises, promises.”
“Feel free to applaud once I fulfill every single one.” And with that he closed his mouth over her nipple while carefully slipping two fingers deep into her entrance.
Nikita stopped moving, stopped thinking. Stopped everything. She could do nothing else as she short-circuited beneath an onslaught of too much stimulation. Every sense shifted into a heightened level of awareness she didn’t even know she had. Her world flooded with a luxurious sensation more potent than any intoxicant known to man, and she was so lost in it she never heard herself whisper his name. She opened her legs more, inviting him to do with her whatever he wanted. Anything he wanted. It didn’t matter. She trusted him utterly.
Like the building hunger surging through her, that trust was something new.
“Do you know how often I’ve done this to you in my fantasies?” His voice was a velvet-edged croon as his mouth slid to where her heart thundered. “There’s nothing I want more than to hear you saying my name like that, knowing I’m the one who’s making you crazy. Making you cry. Making you come. This moment, right now, is my greatest dream.”
He moved again, his hand rotating against her most sensitive point, and it wrenched a fractured whimper out of her. He seemed to like that reaction, as he repeated the move without mercy until she was doing exactly what he wanted—crying out helplessly, his name tangled up in the euphoric insanity that crested ever higher. Her hands fisted in his damp hair to pull his mouth back to hers, immersed in the instinct to find and give fulfillment. She wanted him, all of him, this difficult man who had always meant more to her than a mere professional rival. Everything that made Kyle the man he was called to her on a visceral level. While her logical side had fought like hell against it, he was as close to perfect for her as anyone could be.
Wave upon wave of ecstasy began to buffet her, piling up on itself in a wire-taut delight that was almost painful. Her back bowed as she cried into his mouth, and when he pulled away she thought she might actually die of the shock. But only seconds later he was back after retrieving a long line of linked foil packets from the pocket of his discarded shorts. With the protection in place he settled himself in the cradle of her thighs as if he’d done it a thousand times before, his mouth unerringly finding hers while he slid a hand underneath her. He palmed the curve of her bottom, tilting her hips upward even as she reached for his hardness to guide him into her. He was scorching hot against her palm, his thickness making her heart pause, amazed he could be so hard and still have such control while he focused on her needs.
A considerate lover, as well as everything else. The man deserved some kind of reward.
She caught his lower lip between her teeth as she brought him to her threshold, then surprised him by digging her naked heels into his ass to push him forward in one abrupt motion. A jagged sound ripped out of him as if he’d been lashed with a whip. But there was only pleasure in his cry, not pain, and it brought a new layer of joy to her spiraling exhilaration. This was what she’d wanted—his body buried within hers, yes, but with a helplessness that matched her own. If he had fantasies about her, she’d certainly had more than a few of her own. And her greatest fantasy of all—bringing Kyle to a place where he didn’t even know the meaning of control.
“Nikita. My Nikita.” In the moonlight she watched his eyes close, his mouth
opening on a low moan as she brought her legs up higher, her thighs clutching his rib cage while the movement sparked an intense flare of pleasure deep inside. “I’ve wanted this...”
She moved again, chasing the elusive hint of heaven they could share, and it was enough to break some inner restraint in him. She felt it go—his teeth snapped together as if in torment, and suddenly he was plunging into her up to his hilt as if trying to reach the very core of her soul. She lifted her hips in time with his, her breath coming in short gasps as the frantic, ebb-and-flow of pleasure surged higher, a burgeoning flood of mindlessness she couldn’t quite...reach...
Kyle arched with a hoarse growl, and the tempo of his pulsing hips became maddened, a wild pell-mell of motion that at last unleashed the sweetly agonizing tension. Ecstasy shattered her, along with every concept she’d had of what ecstasy could be. As the tightness of her body milked his, she had no hope of ever putting herself back together in quite the same way again.
Chapter Eleven
“...tropical wave has officially strengthened into a depression, now approximately two hundred miles off the coast of southern Florida. Computer models on this storm’s trajectory are all over the place, so we’ll keep you updated as things develop.”
Kyle rolled onto his side, then grimaced when warm, bright light shone through his eyelids. Sunlight? That didn’t make sense. The sun wasn’t supposed to be on this side of the room. He cracked his eyes open to stare at an unfamiliar chrome lamp set atop a built-in side table.
