One-Click Buy: September 2010 Harlequin Blaze

by Lori Wilde

  When the lights were a distant glow, he stopped and pulled her close again.

  “Betty.” He kissed her, and she could feel the smile on his lips.

  Probably she should correct him—her name was Elizabeth, after all, and it looked as though they were about to have sex. But she didn’t care. All her thoughts, all her focus were on one thing—the needy, desperate throb between her legs.

  She slid her hands down the muscles of his belly to the waistband of his jeans. He wasn’t wearing a belt and the denim gave easily as she tugged at one stud, then another, then another. She slid her hand inside his jeans and found the heat and hardness of him. She wrapped her fingers around him and stroked.

  He started kissing her neck and she felt a tug behind her neck, closely followed by the coolness of the night air on her bare breasts as the untied halter of her dress dropped to her waist. He made an approving sound and cupped her breasts in both hands, his thumbs grazing her nipples over and over.

  She started pulling at the waistband of his jeans, peeling them down over his hips.

  “Easy, Betty,” he whispered against her skin. “Easy.”

  “I want you,” she said, the boldest words she’d ever spoken. “Inside me. Now.”

  He squeezed her breasts tightly in response. “What the lady wants.”

  As one they sank onto the sand, she on her back, him on top. Elizabeth opened her thighs and welcomed his weight as he pressed over her. He lowered his head and sucked first one nipple, then the other into his mouth. She arched her back and cried out. She was so close, so close. He hadn’t even taken her panties off yet and already this was the most fulfilling, exciting sex of her life.

  His hand skimmed up the inside of one of her widespread thighs and she gave an excited little gasp as his fingers found the damp silk of her underwear.

  “Mmm,” he said against her breast, clearly savoring her arousal. He stroked her through the damp silk before slipping his fingers beneath it to slide into her slick heat.

  She closed her eyes and started to pant. His erection pulsed in her hand and she stroked her hand up and down more urgently, feeling the gentle velvet of the head, the silky steel of the shaft, the soft springiness of his hair.

  He thrust a finger inside her. She bit her lip and lifted her hips, wanting more. A second finger slid inside her. She started to circle her hips.

  So good. So good.

  He pulled away from her for a moment and she felt him tugging at his jeans. She lifted her hips and pulled her panties down her legs, tossing them heedlessly to one side. She heard the faint crinkle of a foil packet and barely had time to register that he was using a condom before his weight was on her again and she was rising up to meet his penetration.

  He slid inside her in one slick, powerful thrust, stretching her to the point of almost-pain. She sucked in a breath, her fingers clenching into his shoulders. She sucked in another as he started to move, pumping in and out of her, hot and hard and so good she couldn’t believe it. His mouth was on her breasts, biting and licking and sucking her nipples. She slid her hands down onto the round, firm muscles of his backside and held on for dear life.

  This was what she’d wanted. Mindless need. Heat. Slick wetness. This pressure building inside her. This wildness.

  She could feel her orgasm approaching. She both craved it and feared it. She didn’t want this to end. This was all her fantasies rolled into one, everything she’d ever dreamed about in the dark quiet of her bedroom while she pleasured herself with her own hands—no gentle words and respectful, considerate, careful caresses, just his hard body slamming into hers, the suck of his mouth on her breasts, the rasp of his hairy, hard body against hers, the rise of her hips to meet his, her hands, urgent and demanding on his body. This was almost everything she’d ever wanted, except—

  “Could we… Could you… Do you think we could do it on our knees. With you behind me?” she asked.

  He stilled. For a moment she thought she’d ruined everything. Martin had been appalled when she’d asked him to take her from behind. As sexual fantasies went, she hadn’t thought it was too outrageous, but maybe nice girls didn’t ask to do it doggy style. There were so many things she didn’t know, after all. So many things she hadn’t done.

  Then Nathan withdrew from her and his hands found her hips. Excitement throbbed deep inside her as she followed his urging to roll over, rising up onto her knees almost immediately. He flipped her skirt up and out of the way and instinctively she arched her back, offering herself flagrantly. He muttered something under his breath. She felt the probe of his cock at her entrance, then he was sliding inside her, deeper than ever, filling her utterly. “Oh. Yes! Yes!” she breathed.

  It was better than she’d ever imagined. So deep. So full.

  He started to move, stroking in and out of her. She heard the slap of his thighs against her own, felt the rasp of his skin against hers. Heat rolled through her in waves, pushing her higher and higher. He reached a hand around her torso to tease her nipples. She started to gasp, pressing back against him urgently, tilting her hips and clenching her inner muscles.

  So close, so close.

  His hand slid down her belly and into the wet curls at the apex of her thighs. Then his fingers were teasing her in divine counterpoint to his thrusts, and she was done for.

  Her orgasm hit her like a wall, rolling through her body, tensing her muscles, arching her back. She hissed between her teeth, groaned his name. And still it kept coming, pulsing, wet, mind-blowing. She felt him shudder, felt him push himself inside her with a new urgency, and then he was buried inside her, his body hard as granite against hers as he shuddered through his own climax.

  There was a small silence afterward, a moment of absolute stillness, then he withdrew from her. She let her head drop forward, resting it on her fisted hands.

  Her belly muscles were still trembling with the aftermath of her orgasm. Her legs felt weak. She even felt a little dizzy, as though all her blood had rushed south to the party and left precious little to spare for her brain.

  “I thought Englishwomen were supposed to be uptight,” Nathan said, his voice deep and amused.

  “So did I.”

  She started to laugh. She felt amazing. Released. Relaxed. Revealed.

  Right at that moment, nothing else mattered. Not the fact that they hardly knew each other, or that she was thousands of miles from home, or that she had no idea what to do next. There was only right here and right now. And it was damned good.

  4

  NATHAN WOKE IN A TANGLE of sandy limbs. He pushed a strand of pale blond hair off his face and blinked in the early morning light. For the first time in a long time his first thoughts weren’t of Olivia. The reason for that was curled up against him on his bed, her backside snugged into the cradle of his hips, one of his arms draped around her body, his hand resting possessively on her breast.

  Elizabeth Mason. Sam’s daughter. The not-so-uptight English princess.

  He was already half-hard, but he grew to full hardness as memories from last night came flooding back. Her hands down his jeans on the beach. The first slide of his fingers into her slick, ready heat. The way she’d begged him to take her from behind and then offered herself to him so eagerly. Her fervent, needy, lusty response to his every lick, suck, stroke or caress. They’d had sex again when they got back to his place, her on top this time, her cries ringing out into the night.

  Not-so-uptight, indeed.

  She stirred, her backside nudging against his stiff cock. He pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck, then nipped her skin gently. She tensed in his arms, fully awake.

  Good.

  He found her nipple with his thumb while he teased the sensitive skin of her nape with his tongue. Her nipples grew hard and she stirred again in his arms.

  He eased her knee forward with his and reached behind himself to the bedside stand. Fifteen seconds later, he had a condom on and was pressing into her hot folds. She made an approving s
ound in the back of her throat as he slid inside her, the tight clench of her muscles closing around him.

  She was incredible, so smooth and sweet-smelling and tight and wet. He rocked his hips, nudging just the head of his cock in and out, in and out. She moaned and he felt her inner muscles clutching around him. He’d meant to take it nice and slow—lazy, half-asleep morning sex—but she started to push against him and things quickly got urgent and sweaty and greedy. He grasped her hips and she rolled fully onto her belly, then up onto her knees.

  He could feel how much she loved it like this, how much it excited her, which only made him harder and hotter. Then she arched her back and clenched her hands into the sheets as she came. He could feel her pulsing around him. Her inarticulate little sounds pushed him over the edge. He bent over her, panting his climax into her shoulder as he lost himself for a few precious seconds.

  The ultimate forgetting. If only it lasted longer.

  She collapsed on her belly afterward. He rolled to one side and took care of the condom. Then he flopped onto his back and for a moment they were both silent, the only sound their heavy breathing and the faint sound of the wind in the old liquid amber tree outside. The studio smelled of sex and clean sweat and her perfume and he let his gaze play over the perfect, fair skin of her back and her rounded, sweet-shaped behind.

  That ass… That ass made him want to do a million bad, dirty things all at once.

  “What time is it?” Her voice sounded husky and a little uncertain.

  “Nearly seven.”

  She braced her elbows on the bed and propped her forehead on her hands. After a long moment she shifted her head slightly so she could see him out of the corners of her eyes. He raised an eyebrow when their gazes met.

  She looked deeply uncertain and more than a little embarrassed. Maybe his first assessment hadn’t been that far off. Maybe she was a little uptight, after all.

  “Good morning,” she said. She sounded very stiff, as though she’d rehearsed those two words several times in her mind before uttering them.

  “Pretty good way to start it, anyway.”

  She rolled onto her back, carefully keeping the sheet over her breasts. Which struck him as being pretty amusing, considering he’d been inside her only a few minutes ago.

  Her gaze slid toward the door and she frowned. He followed her eye line—her dress was crumpled on the floor just inside the doorway, a pool of red and yellow, her sandals kicked to one side.

  He had a fair idea what she was frowning over, and his suspicions were confirmed when she reached for the T-shirt trailing off the end of the bed. He watched as she shrugged into it under the covers before sliding out of bed and collecting her dress. Her back turned, she stepped into the dress and didn’t abandon his T-shirt until she was decently covered. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that her skirt was caught up at the back, exposing the back of one lovely thigh and half a rounded butt cheek. She’d feel the breeze once she stepped outside, he figured.

  She pulled her hair into a ponytail, plaiting it and then tucking it in on itself until it formed a loose knot on the back of her head. She had slender, graceful arms and hands, like a dancer’s. He liked watching her move, even if her misplaced modesty was pretty damn funny.

  He’d been so busy being entertained, it wasn’t until she started to toe on her sandals that he realized she was about to race out the door.

  While he hadn’t exactly been a hound dog over the past few months, he hadn’t lived like a monk, either, and he’d dealt with more than his fair share of morning-after coy looks and questions hinting at one night becoming more.

  Clearly, there would be no such issues with his cool English lover.

  “Is there a shoe sale on in town I don’t know about?” he asked.

  He ought to be grateful she was making it so clean and easy, but for some reason her eagerness to bail offended him. Not that he wanted her clinging to his chest and begging for a lifelong commitment, God forbid. But a little show of reluctance to draw a line under some of the best sex of his adult life might not go astray.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He shrugged, not about to explain. If she wanted to go, she should go. He wasn’t about to beg her to hang around.

  He pushed back the covers and stood. She made a small, breathless sound as her gaze slid over his body. The hot, sticky look in her eyes went a long way to assuaging his ego. If he wanted to, he could have her in bed again within seconds.

  The thought had barely registered before she reached for the door handle.

  “I really have to go,” she said.

  Then, before he could open his mouth to respond, she was gone.

  He blinked. Bloody hell. Talk about wham, bam, thank you, Nate. He’d never seen a woman so keen to get the hell out of Dodge before.

  He shook off his irritation as he reached for a pair of cargo pants. So what? They’d had sex, it had been good, she’d bailed. Big deal. He probably wouldn’t remember her name by the end of the week. Which was just the way he wanted it. No strings, no obligations, no guilt.

  No possible way he could ever let anyone down ever again.

  Pushing her from his mind, he went to make himself breakfast for one.

  ELIZABETH REMEMBERED ENOUGH about the walk to Nate’s place the previous evening to find her way back to the beach. From there it was a simple matter of turning her left shoulder to the water and walking until she hit the pier and the point where Main Street met the beach—except for the fact that with every step she was painfully aware of the fact that she was wearing no underwear. And that parts of her were feeling more than a little tender after three bouts of very active, very hot, very urgent sex with a man who gave absolutely no quarter in the bedroom.

  She was such a hussy!

  The way she’d chased after him. The way she’d propositioned him. The way—she pressed her hands over her face as the memory rushed up at her—the way she’d begged him to do her from behind.

  She was shameless. Utterly shameless.

  And the worst thing was, she didn’t have it in her to regret any of it. It had been wonderful. She’d felt so free, so alive. And he’d been so amazing—generous and passionate and intuitive. He hadn’t questioned anything, or made her feel silly or dirty or wrong, he’d simply thrown himself wholeheartedly into the moment. Just thinking about it made her want to—

  She gave a shriek as an offshore breeze danced around her legs and her skirt kicked upward. She clamped her hands down on either side of her skirt. There was an older woman walking her dog down by the tide line and two joggers pounding the sand. She was sure they had all taken one look at her smudged makeup and mussed hair and understood that she’d just crawled out of bed. She didn’t need to expose her naked nether regions to them to confirm the fact.

  Which brought her to an important point she could no longer avoid: she had no idea where her panties were. The last time she could remember wearing them had been when Nathan had led her along the beach to find some privacy. She couldn’t remember if she’d put them back on again for the walk to his place or not. She’d been so blown away after what had happened, so enamored of him, it was impossible to remember clearly.

  A horrible thought hit her. What if she’d left them on the beach? The thought of her abandoned knickers being discovered by someone was enough to make her feel distinctly queasy. So very, very refined. If Grandmama could see her now…

  Elizabeth pushed the thought away. She refused to feel guilty about last night. Yes, she’d had sex with an almost-stranger. The first one-night stand of her life. But it had been wild and sexy and sensual and she would not regret it. It was her private business and no one need ever know about it. What happened on Phillip Island stayed on Phillip Island.

  Still, she kept an eye out for her knickers all the way back to the pub. She even backtracked a little, exploring the dry sand past the high-tide mark. She found nothing. She told herself that most likely they’d been swept out to sea and v
ery badly wanted to believe it.

  No one was stirring inside and she slunk up to her room gratefully. It was one thing to be determined not to feel regret and another thing entirely to do the walk of shame.

  She showered and fell into bed for another couple of hours, waking when the temperature began to climb again and the room became too stuffy for comfort. Sitting up in bed, she crossed her legs and pushed her hair back from her face and made some decisions.

  Nate had offered to put her in contact with her father, even if it wasn’t exactly in the manner of her choosing. She would wait until he heard something, then she would make her decision. There was nothing for her to rush home to, after all. She’d been working as a substitute teacher all year and the term was already over for her. Workwise, she could extend her stay in Australia until at least mid-January if she had to.

  And—coward though it made her—maybe it would be better for herself and her grandparents to have a little breathing room before they came face-to-face again. Give tempers and ruffled feathers a chance to calm down.

  And in the meantime, she would stretch her wings a little. Explore Cowes and the nearby beaches, get to know the locals a little. Find out what it was that Elizabeth Mason wanted in life if it wasn’t marriage to a perfectly nice, perfectly perfect Englishman.

  That ought to be enough to fill up her days. As for the nights…

  A dozen hot and sweaty memories flitted across her mind. She pushed them away. Best not to think about the nights. She might be woefully naive in the world of casual sex, but she knew that looking for anything more than one night from a man like Nate was the emotional equivalent of playing Russian roulette.

  She might have had a reckless moment, but she wasn’t a reckless person.

  NATE ARRIVED AT THE PUB shortly after six. The surf had been going off out at Kitty Miller Bay in the morning and he’d caught a lift out there with Tommy, then mowed the yard in the early afternoon. When he’d finished, he’d strung the old hammock between the studio and the liquid amber tree and sucked down a few beers in the drowsy afternoon heat.