“That’s not even close to what I’m thinking. I’m thinking you’re fucking beautiful and there’s a strong chance I’m hallucinating this entire thing.” As she laughed, he put one knee on the edge of the bed between her thighs. “But you still have too many clothes on. I really need that t-shirt back, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is. You take in a helpless fire victim, clothe her, then take it all back. Nice going, hotshot.”
He snorted loudly as he lifted the shirt over her head. “Helpless fire victim? Not hardly. I’m the helpless victim in this scenario.”
“Excuse me? How are you a victim?” She spoke from behind the fabric. When her head popped free, static electricity clung to the long strands of her hair, plastering them against her face. She tried to push them away from her eyes, blinking madly. She was so adorable, his heart hurt.
“Because from the first moment I saw you, I couldn’t think of anything else. That’s still true. You keep pushing me away, but it doesn’t make any difference. I’m starting to feel sorry for myself, I really am.”
“Oh stop.” She reached for him with a soft look in her eyes. “Does it look like I’m pushing you away? Come here.”
He braced himself over her while she ran her hands up and down his arms. She didn’t even flinch when she passed the ridge of scar tissue along his right biceps. Something in him relaxed, and he realized he’d been holding on to the fear that his scars made him sexually unappealing. He hadn’t slept with anyone since the burnover.
But Lisa was touching him as if she couldn’t get enough. She pulled off his t-shirt and feasted her eyes on his torso. Her hands ran across his abdomen, dipping between the ridges of muscle, making him go hard as a fricking rock. Then she planted a hand on his chest and pushed him into an upright position. “You can come back down here when your pants are gone.”
He snorted. “You’re kind of a mean nurse, you know that?”
“Nurses always know best,” she tossed back, all saucy. In mock revenge, he lifted her foot to his mouth and nipped her big toe.
“No arguments here.” He nibbled her foot until she squirmed and gasped. Then he released her foot and dropped his hands to the waistband of his jeans. His cock was so engorged with arousal that he actually had trouble with the zipper. He struggled with it, finally managing to get it over the massive bulge underneath. “If I injure myself because I’m so turned on, you’ll take care of me, right?”
She laughed, a flush coming and going in her cheeks.
Finally the zipper slid down and he shucked his jeans and underwear. He stood naked before her in all his scarred, aroused glory.
She scanned his body, the moment stretching until it felt endless. A faint trace of smoke still clung to them both, and it mingled with the perpetual potpourri smell of the guesthouse. He realized that from now on, for the rest of his life, this smell would bring back this exact moment. The moment when he and Lisa were completely naked together for the very first time.
“I don’t want to rush you, but there’s an urgent situation I need to address.” He slid back over her body, hovering over her the way he had before. But now, with no clothes on, the electricity crackling between them felt a hundred times more intense.
Her dark gaze captured his, so he felt like he was falling, falling. “I just want you to know that I don’t usually do this.”
“This?” He lowered his head so he could touch his tongue to her nipple. She trembled as he circled it tenderly, using the sharp point of his tongue to tease the little nub into a hard peak.
“Or maybe this?” He moved to the other nipple. She tasted so sweet against his tongue that he lost track of time as he lavished attention on her beautiful breasts, with their deep red areolas and responsive tips.
He didn’t stop until she was squirming and moving her legs restlessly against his. He shifted lower down on her body, nipping his way along her torso, tasting the softness of her belly, the sleek curve of her ribs.
She whimpered and dug her fingers into his hair. “Finn, we don’t need foreplay. I’m ready. I want you. I want this.”
“You keep saying that.” He reached her intimate curls and dropped a kiss on the downy mound. “I’m just trying to figure out what ‘this’ is. Is it maybe something like…” He set his hands on her upper thighs and spread them open. The glisten of moisture between her legs went right to his head, and he had to take a deep breath. His erection pounded with arousal. He wanted her with every cell of his body. But he wanted to make this so spectacular she’d never want anyone else.
So he dipped his head to her clit, using the gentle, warm pressure of his tongue until he felt it swell. She tasted so amazing, like honey and passion all intermingled in one intoxicating flavor. He lapped at her, exploring with his tongue and lips and mouth. Her hips were making little bucking motions and her inner thighs trembled. The muscles strained against his grip, but he held firm. He wasn’t ready to end this feasting yet. He loved this, loved having her open beneath him, loved hearing her soft whimpers and moans.
“Finn,” she begged. “Please, Finn, please.”
He loved that even more. His name on her full lips, the heavy flush in her pale skin, the dark wine of her nipples standing at attention. She was a feast for every one of his senses.
Then her movements got more rapid as she pushed against his mouth. She wanted to come. She was ready to come. And he could explode right this second. Instead, he stayed with her on her roller-coaster ride to orgasm. He increased the friction and pressure of his tongue, moved with her rhythm, tuning into the speed she wanted. He felt as if all his senses were synced with her, and all he had to do was listen, watch, smell, respond, touch, lick, gorge, and hang on for the ride when she cried out and arched against him.
Looking up, he drank in the dazed expression on her face, the rise and fall of her chest. Even though his cock ached with need, he knew this was what he really wanted. This intimacy, this closeness. He wanted to reach past her defenses and make her come apart. He’d wanted her to fly free and forget all the worries that made her keep her distance.
“Wow,” she finally murmured. “That was…thank you.”
He smiled. He could still taste her sweetness on his tongue. “My pleasure. Seriously. You have no idea what a pleasure it was.”
He rolled over and rested his head on his bent arm. His cock brushed against her hip, make it ache even more painfully. Seriously, he’d have to get the thing looked at if the pressure didn’t get relieved soon. But his satisfaction could wait. He wanted her to come again, maybe a couple of times, before he took his own release. He wanted this to be the best ever for her. The kind of “best” she’d never forget.
If he had to bury his cock in an ice bucket to bring down his erection, he would.
She rolled over onto her side and frowned at him. Not the reaction he was expecting. “Don’t you have a condom around?”
“I do.” He grinned at her. “But maybe I’m not done making you come yet.”
She sat up, her hair falling around her shoulders. A damp sheen of sweat covered her chest. “Half an hour ago you looked like you might explode if we didn’t go to bed.”
“I can control myself.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and would have jumped off if he hadn’t wrapped an arm around her waist.
“Hang on, buttercup. What’s going on here?”
She kept her back to him. “I thought you wanted me.”
“Have you seen my hard-on? Fuck yes, I want you. Why would you have a single second of doubt?” Just to prove it, he took her hand and wrapped it around his cock, even though there was a big risk he’d come all over her hand if it moved so much as a millimeter. “Yeah, I want you. Like crazy. I might lose it if you so much as breathe on me. So what’s the problem? Walk me through it.”
She took her hand away and scooted around to face him. “This doesn’t feel right, Finn. You’re trying to prove something to me. You’re trying
to impress me with what an amazing lover you are. The Mighty Finn.”
His jaw clenched tight. “That’s not me anymore. I just want this to be good for you.”
“Finn, listen to me. I don’t want to be impressed. I want you. When we came in here, I thought you were going to take me against the wall. And I wanted that.”
She put her hand back on his cock and slid it lightly up and down the length of his erection. He gritted his teeth to keep his focus.
“But honey, you deserve more than some screw against the wall. You’ve been through a lot the past couple of days. I wanted this to be incredible. Something you’ll never forget.”
Was he apologizing for that? Christ, she had him all mixed up. And all he could think about was her hand on his cock. Focusing on her face, her words, was nearly impossible.
She scooted on her knees right up close to him and smoothed her hands gently down his shoulders, his upper arms. “It was incredible. You’re incredible. But this is sex, not romance. I can’t start a romance right now. My life is nuts. You’ve seen it yourself. I have to figure out what I’m doing, where I’m going, how to handle this mess I’m in.”
He started to speak, but she put a finger on his lips.
“I want hot, reckless, crazy sex. I want to get down and dirty and wicked and wild. I want you to lose your mind like I just did.”
She gripped his cock again and ran her thumb around the tip. His eyes nearly crossed from the blinding pleasure of it. It blocked the sting of her words about “no romance.” That hurt, he couldn’t lie. But right now, with her hand on his shaft, he was fine leaving that conversation for another day. Now that he had her in bed, he could work on the rest of it.
“Lose my mind,” he murmured. “I can do that.” He reached for her, but she held up a hand to show she wasn’t finished.
“Also—stop treating me like some fragile person who just lost her entire home and all her possessions and is really quite frankly kind of pathetic.”
He stared at her. Message received. Lisa was a strong, resilient, kickass, sexy woman who gave as good as she got. And damn it, he’d give it to her.
“I think I’ve heard enough here.” He flipped her onto her back. She squeaked in surprise, eyes going wide.
He reached for the nightstand next to the four-poster bed and felt around for a condom. “If I want to try to impress you, I’ll do it. If I want to make you come before I get a chance to put on a condom, I’ll do it.” He rolled the condom onto his dick. “I don’t think you’re pathetic, you haven’t lost all your possessions, and I don’t think you’re fragile. But if I want to help you stay safe, I’m going to fucking do it.”
She stared up at him, her pupils so dilated her eyes looked midnight black. “Unless I tell you to fuck off.”
“Right.” He hefted his cock in one hand. With the other, he stroked the insides of her thighs and across her soft mound, still damp from her orgasm. “So what’s it going to be? Can we fuck? Or should I fuck off?”
She burst into laughter even as her legs fell open under his touch. “You really have a way with words, you know that?”
“Words are just one of my talents. Make the call. Because if I wait another goddamn second to get inside you, I will lose my mind.” His blood pounded in his ears, his cock pulsed inside its latex sheath.
“Fuck me,” she whispered. “Fuck me the way you want to. However you want.”
Like water bursting through a dam, his control snapped. He spread her legs apart. He touched her clit with the pad of his thumb, feeling an answering pulse of heat. Still wet, still juicy and swollen. Grabbing onto every last bit of his willpower, he inserted the tip of his cock inside her and gritted his teeth against the intense pleasure. Don’t come, don’t come. Hang on, you motherfucker.
He must have muttered part of that out loud. “What did you call me?”
“Nothing. I was talking to myself. God, you feel good. Fuck.”
She arched back so he could ease himself into her, inch by thick inch. “Do you always swear this much during sex?” she gasped.
“Fuck if I know.”
She choked out a laugh as he seated himself fully inside the deep warmth of her channel. The walls fluttered around him, little pulses surrounding him with electric thrills. “Goddamn,” he breathed.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Her head fell back on his comforter. He bent her legs back toward her chest and put his hands on her knees so he could deepen his strokes. Her breath came fast. Her eyelids closed halfway, her lips parted. She was a wet dream spread out beneath him.
And he couldn’t hold back. He pumped into her, dizzy with pleasure from the tight clasp of her body and the way she met each thrust with a tilt of her hips.
“I’m not going to last long.” His vision went starry at the edges. “Fuck, Lisa. You feel so good. So damn good.”
And then he was plunging down the final drop of the roller coaster, going faster and faster, the wind rushing past his face, pleasure jolting through his spine, and when she stiffened and cried out, he lost it. He detonated into a blinding, soaring orgasm, almost like a leap off a cliff at the end of a bungee cord. Even when it seemed to end, the spasms kept coming, little aftershocks of ecstasy. He kept his eyes shut tight. He wanted to collapse on top of her, but he didn’t want it to be over.
Because with Lisa, there was never any guarantee there’d be a next time.
19
As a medical professional, Lisa tried to look at sex in a practical way, as nothing more than a biological function. Its only real purpose was to reproduce, after all. The reason orgasms existed was to encourage people to have sex. She’d enjoyed sex in the past, but had never gotten carried away with it. After watching her mother treat love and marriage like a competitive sport, she’d chosen a different path. She didn’t want her life to be a series of dramas and heartbreaks. Sex was fine, but she’d skip the romance and flowers. “Friends with benefits”—that was the way to go.
She’d made it to the age of twenty-eight that way. Then she’d left Houston, met Finn in a tower, and now everything felt different.
“Friends with benefits” had absolutely nothing to do with what she’d just experienced with Finn. That wasn’t just an orgasm. It was an earthquake. It completely shook up all her ideas about sex and intimacy.
“Friends with benefits” was so much less confusing than this.
How could Finn Abrams, with his easy charm and ruined face, make her feel something so powerful? She wanted to do it again, as soon as possible. But she also wanted to run for the hills. Literally.
Maybe she could hide out in the Breton lookout tower again. No one would find her there—except possibly an armed thug with a can of gasoline.
She slept uneasily that night, curled under the covers of Finn’s bed, soaking in the unfamiliar bliss of a male body radiating heat next to her. She kept waking up, panic flashing through her, imagining someone outside the window with a match.
But every time, Finn would mumble something and fling his strong arm across her waist, and its heavy weight would soothe her back to sleep.
In the morning, she stole out of bed and got dressed while he was still sleeping. The covers twisted at his waist, exposing his long torso and muscular shoulders. Maybe some women would fixate on the grotesque scars riding his rib cage. But she barely noticed them anymore, except to find patterns in them, as if they were clouds. A rearing dragon. An erupting volcano. That sort of thing.
She left a note next to his coffeemaker.
Went to talk to Knight. Xo Lisa.
She deliberately left out any mention of her plans after that. She didn’t know what would happen next. At this point, everything she owned would fit into her car and still leave room for a family of four. It would be so easy to slip out of town.
And yet, so hard.
She drove down the long, winding road that led from Rollo’s cliff-top house to the valley where Jupiter Point was nestled. On the way, she called Will
and asked him to meet her for coffee.
The Venus and Mars Café was just opening when she pulled up to the curb. Someone had washed the sidewalk and the front patio with its ironwork fence, so it sparkled in the fresh morning air. A jasmine vine spilled over the black-painted bars, the pink-edged flowers still closed, awaiting full sun. Under the cheerful blue awning, the front door was propped open to welcome the first customers of the day.
Lisa sighed sadly as she got out of her car. It was going to be so hard to leave.
From the moment she’d first set foot in Jupiter Point, she’d felt safe. The little town was just so cheerful and charming, with its historic downtown and quirky star-themed business names. She’d driven the twenty miles from the Breton tower for supplies and found herself enchanted by the cedar-shingled buildings and vintage lampposts lining Constellation Way. The highlight had been a tour of the observatory. After all that time watching the stars from her perch in the lookout tower, she’d wanted a closer look.
How had the senator found her here? She had no idea. The man had resources she couldn’t even imagine.
“Morning, Lisa,” Will’s voice rumbled behind her. He was dressed in cutoff sweats and a faded t-shirt from the athletic department of Florida State University. She wondered if he used to be a football player, with that long-boned, powerful build. Then it occurred to her that he probably wasn’t even on shift yet.
“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking. This is your time off, isn’t it?”
“Always on the job, that’s me.” His slow smile put her at ease. “In a town this size, we have to be. There are only a few of us. Anyway, I always have coffee before I run. Have you ordered?”
She shook her head and followed him inside. They both ordered black coffee and a muffin, then sat down in a corner table as far removed from the other early customers as possible.
Will didn’t waste any time. He fixed his penetrating gray eyes on her. “So what do you have for me?”
Setting Off Sparks (Jupiter Point Book 4) Page 13
