Under the Surface

by Kira Sinclair

  When his skin blazed against hers that was all that mattered. All that existed in her universe.

  The unforgiving pressure of his mouth latched onto her neck. Her shoulder. Sucking, teasing, biting. Prickles chased across her skin and she could feel his satisfaction with her response in the cocky curve of his lips.

  She wanted to make him pay for his arrogance, but couldn’t keep her thoughts from fracturing enough to do it. Not when his fingers were running teasing circles around her navel and across the skin at the waistband of her shorts.

  Later. She’d make him beg, later.

  “God, I love the way you respond to me,” he whispered into her skin. “Do you know how gorgeous you look with your skin flushed and your deep green eyes unfocused?”

  Okay, maybe not.

  “I love knowing I can do that to you. Make you forget everything but the pleasure I can give you.”

  She loved that, too. More than she should, but she’d worry about that later.

  At some point Jackson had slipped open her fly, she had no idea when. But she noticed when he plunged his fingers deep into her panties, finding the slick core of her sex.

  Loralei gasped, arched her hips forward. An unintelligible sound ripped through her chest, reverence and pleading mixed together.

  His other hand found the clasp of her bra between her shoulder blades and snapped it open. She hadn’t dressed for him—or anyone—today. Her underwear wasn’t silk and lace, but plain cotton. It had never bothered her before, but right now she wished she was dressed like a siren instead of the staid historian she actually was.

  Not that Jackson seemed to give a damn.

  He let her bra fall to the floor at her feet and then immediately pushed her shorts and panties off her hips.

  She was perfectly naked, and once again he was fully clothed.

  Loralei tried to turn in his arms so she could return the favor. But his roughened hands tightened on her hips, holding her in place.

  His arm snaked around her waist, crushing her to him. Her spine arched until her butt pressed firmly against his growing erection.

  Loralei tipped her head back, trying to look at him and figure out what he was doing. What he wanted.

  And it was clear as soon as she caught his gaze. Half a foot taller than she was, from his vantage point, Jackson had the perfect view of her body. And from the animalistic heat blazing from his eyes, he was relishing it.

  His gaze devoured every inch of her.

  Loralei had never felt so exposed—so desired—in her life. Her skin actually pulsed with it.

  She pulled in a rough gasp, appreciating the way his eyes went dark and a bit dangerous as her chest rose and fell with the stuttered breath.

  “God, Loralei.” His voice was midnight heat, smooth and low. And if he didn’t touch her soon, she was going to spontaneously combust.

  As if sensing just how close to the edge he’d pushed her, Jackson chose that moment to give her what she needed.

  Starting at her collarbone, he traced the delicate curves of her body with a single fingertip. The caress was light. Torture. Especially combined with the sharp cut of his possessive stare.

  Why did it feel as if he was claiming every inch he touched? For his use. Her pleasure.

  What should have bothered her was how much she wanted him to take every inch of her. But it didn’t. How could it when she knew exactly how expertly he could handle her? How much she could trust him. At least with her body.

  His hand slipped over her tummy, making her muscles jump and leaving a restless, tickling sensation that spread out from her center. Anticipation. That’s what it was.

  She had no idea what he was going to do next. And that excited her. Left her breathless.

  Slowly, his fingers curled over her sex. He teased the crease at her hip, brushed across her clit. Heat spread, turning her insides liquid.

  She had no idea how long he stayed there, gently pulling at the close-cropped curls covering her. Caressing her. Driving her crazy. Long enough that she was so slick with need she could feel the moist heat of her own desire coating her skin. His fingers.

  The urge to squirm was a building thing, deep inside, but his other arm held her tight against the solid wall of his body.

  Please, please, please was the litany running over and over inside her head. It was possible she said the words aloud, but she wasn’t entirely certain.

  But there was no mistaking the cry of relief that erupted from her lips when he finally spread her sex wide and dipped inside. She was so close that she was afraid the first real touch would send her immediately over the edge.

  Not what she wanted. She needed to feel him, hot and thick inside her.

  Loralei tried to pull away, but instead of letting her go, Jackson curved his other hand around the edge of her jaw. With gentle pressure, he directed her gaze across the room to the mirror bolted to the wall. She’d forgotten it was there.

  The sight reflected there nearly made her knees collapse.

  There was a wanton woman practically draped across Jackson’s tall, delicious body.

  There was something wholly erotic about the image. Not just the vision of her own naked body, but the sharp pull of Jackson’s features. The way his eyes consumed her, in the mirror, outside the reflection. He kept looking back and forth between the two as if he couldn’t decide which view was better.

  Greedy man, he wanted them both. But then so did she.

  Raising her arms, Loralei slowly clasped her fingers behind his neck, arching her body and stretching up on tiptoe. She’d never been one to stare at herself. She wasn’t the vain type.

  But tonight she could admit she was amazing. Because he made her feel amazing.

  The low growl that slipped through his lips and rumbled across her skin made her bold.

  As his right hand played with her sex, teasing the entrance to her body, brushing terrifyingly softly across her clit, his left dropped to her breast and pinched an already aching nipple between thumb and forefinger.

  Neither one of them could pull their gaze away. Together, they finally watched his fingers disappear inside her body. Loralei whimpered, her eyelids threatening to close on the sweet pleasure.

  “Watch,” Jackson ground out, somehow managing to make the demand gentle. Maybe it was the slight tremor to the single word. The realization that though she hadn’t touched him yet, he was as close to the edge as she was.

  She could feel the hard press of his erection caught between them. It was maddening knowing how much he wanted her, but being unable to do anything about it.

  In and out, again and again, together they watched him work over her body. Somehow watching him in the mirror amplified the slide of each plunge, the emptiness of each retreat.

  Loralei could feel the orgasm building inside her, powerful and overwhelming. She knew the explosion was coming, but could do nothing to stop the swell and pressure.

  And then it was there, dragging a cry from her parted lips. She trembled with the force of it, grateful for Jackson’s arm around her to hold her steady. He murmured words, the cadence of them registering even if the actual meaning didn’t.

  Her brain clicked back into gear and she blinked to find them still facing the mirror, but at some point Jackson had managed to shed his clothes.

  He was still behind her. Holding her. The heat of him practically burning into her.

  His cock thrust between them, pressed hard and heavy against the small of her back. Loralei’s hips made an involuntary movement, a pulse and slide that had him sucking in a hard breath.

  How could she want him—no, need him—after that mind-blowing orgasm?

  But there was no denying her body’s reaction.

  She knew it. Jackson saw it. And that damn wicked smirk was back on his lips. But before she could do anything about it, the flat of his palm was pressing between her shoulder blades.

  It was instinctive, the way she folded beneath the pressure, her own palms flattenin
g against the low surface of the mattress in front of her. Tapping her feet, Jackson silently asked her to spread wide for him.

  Leaning forward, he murmured in her ear, “Don’t take your eyes off the mirror.”

  As if she could have pulled her gaze away from him if she’d wanted to. Jackson Duchane was a force to be reckoned with fully clothed. His body was a work of art, muscles, bones and tendons coming together in a form that was as close to perfect as humanly possible.

  She wanted to run her hands over every inch of him, explore the bulges and indents. The strength and tension and sinew that made him the man he was.

  Loralei watched him position himself behind her. Unable to help herself, she licked her lips and then dragged the bottom one between her teeth. Jackson’s gaze snagged there for several moments. His nostrils flared on a heavy breath, as if he was fighting for control.

  The first time had been unintentional. But with a wicked thrill coursing through her, Loralei repeated the movement, this time giving her hips a wiggle so that she grazed against the throbbing length of his erection.

  His eyes went wild. That was the only way she could describe his reaction. She practically watched the thread to the restraint he’d been clinging to snap.

  Jackson grasped her hips, his fingers digging into her as he held her steady.

  He stood above her, bronzed skin gleaming with the sheen of sweat, every muscle bunched hard and tight.

  She felt him at her entrance, the wide head of his erection pressing against the opening of her body.

  But better than that, she watched as he disappeared inside, inch by delicious inch. Stretching her. Loralei let out a tiny whimper when his hips pressed against her as he seated himself all the way deep inside. He stayed there for several seconds, letting her body adjust.

  Her arms trembled, not from holding herself up, but from the electrical storm shooting through her nervous system.

  And then he was moving in and out, claiming her body. Loralei watched as his sex slid out of her, wet and gleaming with her own desire, before disappearing again. He was slow and deliberate at first. She wasn’t even aware of moving her own hips, but suddenly she noticed she wasn’t just keeping up with his rhythm, but begging Jackson to go faster and harder.

  They were both panting. Her fingers curled into the sheets, popping the corners off as the tension wound tighter inside her. The first orgasm had been mind-numbing. The second was right there, rippling on the edge of her consciousness. And she wanted it. So bad. But she wanted to feel him let go more.

  For the first time since he bent her forward, Loralei tore her gaze away from the reflection where their bodies joined and instead found Jackson’s gaze. And realized he’d been watching her the whole time. Not the sway of her breasts with each of his pounding thrusts or the way he claimed her body. But her face. Her eyes and mouth.

  And the moment she saw that, Loralei felt the first flutters of the orgasm slam into her. “Oh, holy...”

  Jackson groaned, his eyes sliding closed and his thrusts going completely erratic. He buried himself deep inside her, fingers gripping hard to her hips. Just before she surrendered to the orgasm, she felt the kick of his release. The muscles of her sex clamped tight, holding him deep inside her body, just before the breath-stealing contractions of her own release pulled her down into oblivion.

  Together, they collapsed onto the bed. Or maybe she collapsed, her legs and arms refusing to hold her up any longer. Somehow, Jackson managed to roll them so they lay diagonally across the bed.

  He was still buried deep inside her. Loralei knew she should let him get up, go back to his temporary bed in Marcus’s quarters. But several minutes later, when he stirred as if to do that, she clamped her hands on the arms he’d banded around her body and held on tight.

  “No, don’t go. Not yet.”

  What they’d just shared had been down and dirty. And, yet, Loralei had never felt so connected with anyone in her life. Maybe it was because she’d shown him the vulnerability beneath the perfect facade. Or maybe she was a victim of her own hormones. She had no clue.

  But either way, she wasn’t ready for him to leave. Not yet.

  13

  SHE’D ASKED HIM to stay. And he wanted to. It wasn’t that he’d never spent the night with a woman. He had. It was more like he’d never really thought about it one way or the other.

  Before, sleep had simply been something that followed sex. He’d never been the kind to cuddle or spoon. Once the sex was over, he didn’t have a compulsive urge to touch his lover.

  Until Loralei.

  Eventually, he did get up, pad to the attached bathroom and clean up a bit. But the entire time, he’d wanted to be back in that bed with her. In his bed. Actually, he’d wanted to be buried inside her body. Not necessarily for the orgasm that would follow, but for the sensation of being connected to her in the most physical way possible.

  That should have had him making some excuse to hightail it away from her. Instead, he found himself crawling back into the bed beside her. He didn’t wait for her to roll to him, but snagged her around the waist and settled her soft curves against his body, an arm and leg slung possessively over her.

  Holding her felt right, but his brain told him this wasn’t a good idea. That sooner or later he’d regret letting his guard down around her—and he was betting on sooner.

  Yet he couldn’t make himself pull away again. At least not right now when his body was still languid and his brain was sated.

  Jackson closed his eyes and willed the voice in his head that kept whispering she was using him and would drop him at the first sign that he wasn’t useful anymore, to go the hell away.

  Loralei spoke. Up until that point he’d thought she was half asleep. Her body had been relaxed and boneless, her breathing deep and rhythmic.

  But there was no hint of drowsiness in her words.

  “We identified the cannon as the Chimera’s.”

  Jackson stiffened. Why was she telling him this? And right now. He wanted to take her offer of information at face value, but his training made him immediately look for an ulterior motive.

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, searching his face for several seconds before her eyes crinkled at the corners. “I know.” Her hand, where it rested on his wrist, tightened. And for some reason that was enough to make the tension melt from his body.

  Turning her head, she burrowed deeper into the pillows, into the curve of his body around hers.

  “I felt this...thrill when Eric told me it was definitely from the Chimera.”

  He’d bet. For a moment, Jackson had to beat back the tiny curl of jealousy that slipped through his belly. He didn’t want to have the reaction, but it was hard to fight it down.

  Loralei’s team had something he’d worked years to get. And it had more or less fallen into their laps. All his life his father and stepmother had drilled into him that hard work was rewarded. The Teams had reinforced that idea, allowing only the strongest to enter their ranks.

  He wasn’t a child, throwing a tantrum because the world wasn’t fair. He’d seen enough death and destruction to know there wasn’t always reason behind actions or events.

  But that didn’t stop him from thinking the world should work that way. Or being bothered when it didn’t.

  Especially when the injustice was personal. Loralei might not have stolen the information, but he’d told her it was stolen and she’d still gone ahead and used it.

  Didn’t that make her just as guilty? A few days ago the answer to that question had been black and white. Tonight, it was colored in shades of gray.

  But that was an issue for another time and another place. Outside the bed they’d just shared together. For tonight, he was going to put all that aside and just listen to what she was telling him.

  Or, at least, he was going to try.

  Unaware of his internal struggle, Loralei kept talking.

  “I... It was
unexpected.”

  “That the cannon was theirs?” Because his gut had told him it was as soon as Loralei’s team had raised the artifact. Those instincts had saved his life—Asher’s and Knox’s, as well—on more than one occasion.

  “No, that it mattered to me. That I could get a little lightheaded with the thrill of that discovery. Although, it shouldn’t have.”

  She said the last sentence with a tinge of bitterness that he didn’t quite understand.

  “Why not?”

  Her entire body lifted and held as she drew in a deep breath and then let it out on a noisy sigh. “I spend my days with books and documents and students.”

  That was something he already knew. She had a PhD and worked as a professor and researcher, or had until her father’s death and subsequent bequeathal of Lancaster Diving and Salvage.

  But instead of telling her he’d checked into her before arriving on Turks and Caicos, he kept his mouth shut. Something told him the minute he admitted the truth her words would dry up.

  And he really wanted to know where she was going with this.

  “I spend my time trying to pass on a love of history to young men and women who couldn’t care less. They see my class as an obstacle they have to overcome in order to make it wherever they truly want to go. It pisses me off.” The words came out like a confession, pulled from her so reluctantly that they were low and soft.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Everyone today is in such a hurry—to get somewhere, to do something. Focused so intently on the future that they forget to pay attention to the past. To the lessons our ancestors learned and hoped to pass down to us so that we could do better.”

  She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. “I’ve been to war, Loralei,” he murmured. “I understand.”

  Her fingers tightened around his wrist for a moment before releasing. She stroked her hand down his arm, the caress raising the tiny hairs as it passed.

  “I suppose you do, but not everyone does. And I realized yesterday that I don’t really, either. I’ve been stuck between those dusty shelves, riding my high horse, absolutely refusing to put my knowledge to practical use because I was scared.”