She surged forward, slipped her hands beneath his jacket and eased it off.
His T-shirt followed quickly as he removed it and knelt before her again. She ran her palms all along his skin and he leaned close, shifted his hands to her back to bring her nearer.
She did the same, but encountered the hard ridges of scar as she did so.
He sensed her hesitation and immediately reminded, “Shrapnel. Army, remember?”
With an accepting bob of her head, she traced the edges of his scars with her fingers, as if to soothe, although the hurt was long gone, Aidan thought.
A shudder ripped through his body at her actions and he gripped her tight, buried his head against her neck.
Her comforting brought a change in what had been happening between them. A banking of the fires for the moment as they held one another, drawing succor from the embrace.
Finally he eased away, reached up and brushed a lock of her hair back from her face. “You’re…beautiful.”
She smiled. A slow, comfortable smile that did something funny to his insides. “Thank you.”
He brought his hand down to her shoulder, where he traced the straight line of it. Moved down a little further and ran his thumb along the classically defined edge of her collarbone.
He bent his head, ran his lips along that strong line before urging her upward so that he could kiss her breasts again. Lick her nipples before sucking on them gently.
She cradled his head to her and kissed it. Urged him on with soft cries that told him how much she liked what he was doing. When she leaned back onto the cushions of the sofa, he took the moment once again to admire the strength in her, the lean muscles along her midsection that were impossible to resist.
He laid his hands there, running his finger along the ridges before replacing his hands with his mouth. He paused to kiss the tempting indentation of her navel before reaching the edge of her low-rise black jeans. She shifted her hips up then, and he smiled against her belly.
“Impatient, Lizzy. That’s not a good—”
She silenced him with a kiss that rocked him with its intensity. When she pulled away and sat on the edge of her couch, her sherry-brown eyes were liquid heat. Warm as her gaze, her hands ran down his body while he kneeled before her. They felt even hotter as she eased her fingers beneath the waistband of his jeans before she undid the snap and dragged the zipper down the nearly painful length of his erection.
He was so hard, he immediately sprang out once she released the zipper. She wasted no time in wrapping her hand around him.
“Very impatient,” she confessed.
Almost lightheaded from the surge of desire, he somehow managed to kick off his pants and tightie whities while leaving his wallet, with his condoms, within easy reach.
He was standing before her, ready to kneel again when she leaned forward and kissed the tip of his jutting erection. It trapped his breath somewhere in the middle of his chest, but then she took him into his mouth and his breath disappeared completely.
She was amazing, he thought as he held her head to him. Her mouth was hot and eager as she sucked on him and then withdrew to lick the tip. She bit around the head of his penis while with one hand, she cupped his balls.
His knees nearly buckled and it took all his control not to come right then. Somehow, he mustered his strength, reached for her and urged her to stand. He undid the zipper on her jeans, parted them and slipped his hand beneath to encounter nothing but sleek warm skin.
He was so on the edge, he couldn’t waste the time to take off her pants. Easing his hand downward, he found the center of her. Applied pressure to the bud nestled between her damp lips. He stroked her until she was clinging to him, her breasts against his chest. Her hand stroking up and down the length of him, wet from her mouth.
He met her gaze again and saw her need. Saw her indecision, as well. At least he wasn’t alone in what he was feeling.
She grabbed hold of his shoulders and he finally eased a finger inside her. That action dragged her eyes closed. He didn’t know why, but he needed her to see him. He needed to see what she was experiencing through those amazingly expressive eyes.
“Open your eyes, Lizzy,” he said in soft tones.
It was a battle to do what Aidan asked. It wasn’t just the pleasure she was experiencing from the way he was moving his fingers inside her, or the way her breasts brushed against his smooth chest. Maybe it was that she might give up too much of herself if she did so. Too much of what she was feeling. Hoping for.
“Lizzy, please,” he urged, and in his voice there was something that said she wasn’t alone in her yearnings or her fears.
She did as he asked. Those gorgeous eyes of his were a fusion of lighter and darker blues, like the ocean during a storm, revealing to her as much she had feared.
Cradling the side of his face, she traced the line of his cheek and then shifted downward to the edge of his lips. She moved her thumb across them and he bit down on it, which created a tsunami of desire that swamped her senses.
“Lizzy?” he questioned, his gaze searching her face. Making it impossible for her to do anything other than tell him the truth.
“I want you to kiss me…there.”
Aidan groaned, but hastily removed her jeans.
She sank onto the giving cushions of the sofa, opening her legs as he knelt before her. He rubbed his hands up and down her thighs nervously and his gaze as it skittered up to hers was equally tense.
“Aidan?” she asked and cradled the side of his face.
“You’re like no one I’ve ever met,” he confessed and dropped a kiss on the palm of her hand.
“I hope that’s a good thing,” she said, feeling exposed on too many levels.
“It is, only…I might not be able to stop after this.”
She laid her hands over his to still the motion of his hands as he moved them on her thighs.
“Who said we had to stop?”
His hands trembled hands beneath hers.
He looked up, his gaze intense. Compelling. Troubled.
She suspected that she knew the reason why. Leaning forward, she cradled the back of his head and kissed him. A reassuring kiss. One that said, no matter what happens, it’s okay.
And it was.
When he finally parted her with a hesitant kiss and then licked the swollen bud of her clitoris, she nearly jumped out of her skin. It had been too long and Aidan…Aidan knew just what to do even before she thought it, much less gave voice to it. He slowly licked until she was pressing toward him. Then he sucked and slipped first one finger inside, followed by a second.
She was writhing on the couch, holding his head to her when he bit down on that nub and sent her over the edge.
“Aidan.”
She cried his name out and he rose, was suddenly poised at her entrance. Somehow he’d managed to get a condom on. She couldn’t recall when or how. Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember anything other than how wonderful he was with his hands and mouth.
And although she had just had one of the most satisfying orgasms of her life—even if her experience was limited—she was suddenly on the edge again, wanting him to enter her and ride her to another.
She met his gaze, her breathing still shaky. Reaching for him so that he could join with her, she was surprised when he inched away a bit and shook his head. But when he grinned, she realized with relief that it wasn’t about stopping.
“You won the race, remember?” he said, and, with that, he lay down on the floor and pillowed his head in his hands.
The race? Puzzlement turned to amusement. Ah, yes, the race. The win that guaranteed her position…at least for this time.
She eased off the couch and knelt beside him as he lay exposed to her. That long sculpted body within reach and absolutely impossible to ignore. Almost as impossible to ignore as the long, equally impressive state of his erection.
A pool of damp drenched her as she imagined what would happen soon.
> But first, she had to touch.
Chapter 20
Lucia cursed as the signals from the cameras continued to be nothing more than static. She hadn’t been able to end the jamming. But she had been able to pinpoint the general source of the transmission—a spot right behind the cottage where she had seen Aidan enter with the Sparrow.
She could head there, but by doing so, she risked compromising Aidan’s assignment. Given what she had seen of what was going on…
Aidan was physically safe. His heart, however, was another matter. And the assignment…possibly already compromised if what she suspected was happening was actually happening.
Lucia had heard what he said about it being just about the job. But behind those tones, her women’s intuition had picked up on his attraction to the Sparrow.
Glancing at her watch, she realized Aidan had been incommunicado for just over twenty minutes. That’s all it took, she joked with herself, but realized she couldn’t rush in just yet. She would get in gear, get prepared and give it just a little while longer before she went in search of the jamming device.
Alone. She knew that broke with procedure, but calling in Walker now was sure to cause problems and, as the lead, Aidan would not take it well.
They’d had enough problems without creating another.
Aidan lay watching Lizzy as, in turn, she looked at him. Her sherry-colored eyes had darkened to that cognac color he’d seen the other day. Her gaze was so rich with the heady promise of what was to come, that he nearly grew dizzy from it.
“Lizzy?” he questioned at her delay.
“Just…admiring,” she answered and laid her hand in the middle of his chest. Shifted it over to caress his pec. Run it along the hard edge of his nipple.
He wanted to do the same, and he reached up, cupped her breast. Took her nipple between his fingers and gently twisted it.
Her eyes half closed for a moment and her breath hitched slightly. She liked that. A lot. But so did he.
He needed her closer, so he placed his hands on her hips, exerted gentle pressure so that she would straddle him, the center of her just above his erection, her soft hairs teasing the sensitive skin at the edge, just below the condom’s reach. Then he reached up once more, cradled both her breasts and pleasured her as she slowly explored him.
She placed her hands on his chest and loitered for a moment before inching them down his body, investigating every hollow and plane. Her palms were smooth against his skin, warm and slightly damp.
When she met his gaze, her pupils were open wide. Her lips must have been dry because she licked them nervously.
And suddenly he wanted to lick them too.
He surged up, captured the back of her head in his hand and kissed her. Slipped his tongue into her mouth and sucked on it. When he pulled back a bit and their gazes collided, they both knew it was time.
He didn’t lie back down. He needed to see her eyes. Be close to her as she took him in.
She shifted the final inch, raised her hips and hesitated for just a second, poised above him. Would she take him hard and fast or…
Slowly, Elizabeth thought.
The tip of him just breached her entrance. She lowered her hips, lingering over every inch of him as she moved downward. Her breath was held prisoner in her chest and his face filled her vision as he stretched her.
When she finally had taken all of him in, she paused as the sensation nearly overwhelmed her. “Aidan?” she said and licked her lips.
He picked up one hand and cupped the side of her face. The other was supporting him, allowing him to be close to her as she rode him. “Sweet Lizzy. This is…amazing.”
She couldn’t argue. His length tucked inside her was creating a jumble of sensations. Heat. Wet. A clenching of her insides that demanded she do more to satisfy the knot of need somewhere inside her. Was it down there and just sexual? Or was it in her heart? she wondered, but then she flexed her hips and moved upward, languidly.
The friction of it made her moan and close her eyes.
Aidan didn’t press her then and she was glad for it. She wanted to focus on the pleasure of him next to her. In her. On the delicious sensations that came from moving on him, slowly at first, but then faster and faster as she sought her satisfaction.
He urged her on with soft encouraging words. With the lick of his tongue at the sensitive spot on her neck that he had sucked before. At her breasts as he caressed them with his hand.
At some point, he finally lay back down and brought his hands to her hips to help guide her.
With her hands leaning on his chest and her hips pumping against him, she was near the edge. Her breath was rough in her chest. Her body was trembling. It would only take a little more, she thought, aware that she was near release.
He must have sensed it, as well; for he exhorted her onward, and when she was poised at the edge, he leaned up just enough to suck at the tip of one breast, then bit it gently.
It pushed her over the edge.
She drove down on him hard, called out his name as her body shuddered and trembled with her climax. But he was still hard within her and even as he soothed her with his hands, she could feel her hunger coming back to life.
Aidan sensed her renewed need even as he marveled at it. She had pleasured herself with him, but the pleasure hadn’t been all hers. The feel of her around him, of her breasts and legs and skin…of all of her, was so enticing that he didn’t want it ever to end.
But already her renewed desire was dragging him toward his own climax. He was barely keeping control despite his wish to be with her.
Somehow he managed to get her on her back without breaking away from her. He would have rather died than lose that contact with her, he thought.
She looked up at him, wide-eyed and vulnerable. Almost disbelieving the passion sizzling between them. Afraid. “I’m feeling it too, Lizzy.”
“It’s…scary,” she confessed, creating a spot in his heart for her he didn’t want to have.
Leaning down, he brushed a kiss on her lips and said, “Don’t be scared. I would never hurt you.”
Although he knew he would, because there was no good way for this to end between them. If she wasn’t the Sparrow, he’d still have to leave at the end of the day. He’d already warned her he wasn’t a stay-at-home kind of guy.
And if she was the Sparrow…
He was doomed for sure, he thought, as he moved in her and brought them both to the edge again before they slipped over together.
Afterward, when they were finally breathing and their legs could hold them, they slowly walked upstairs to her bedroom and climbed into bed.
He held her cradled to his side, knowing they would make love again. It had been too amazing for them not to. But before then…
He had a mission. That was why he was here. Liar, the little voice in his head yelled, but he ignored it and pressed forward with his assignment.
“What was it like growing up here? Always being in one place?” he began, in part because he needed to discuss her family, but also because a part of him actually did wonder what such a life was like, having never had such stability during his younger years.
She ran her hand across his chest, the gesture soothing, one of connection rather than desire.
“Nice at times. Annoying at others. In a town as tiny as Leonia, everyone knows everyone. Everyone knows everything about you.”
“Hmm,” he said and rubbed his hand up and down her arm, but didn’t say anything else. He didn’t want to press too hard and arouse suspicions.
“And you? What was it like always moving around?”
Aidan’s answer came quickly, too much so, he feared. “When I was younger, it was hard. I would just get used to the place and make friends and we would get our next assignment.”
“And later? When you were older?” she asked and snuggled closer to him, her body plastered along his side, one thigh tossed over his legs beneath the sheets.
His arm was tu
cked under her and he eased his hand over the curve of her waist to hold her close. “When I was older? I stopped trying to make friends. It made it easier,” he confessed.
She was quiet for a long time before she said, “I had my friends and family. And all the aunts and uncles and cousins, not to mention the neighbors and the milkman…” She stopped with a chuckle and he joined in her amusement.
“It must have been nice. I just had my family.”
“And Mitch,” she added.
Involuntarily, he stiffened at the mention of his friend’s name. Especially coming from her. But she was right. He’d had Mitch. “Mitch was…like a brother.”
“Did they ever find out—”
“Why he was killed. No,” he answered tightly, since at the reference to his friend, the headache he’d had that morning had begun to return.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to bring up anything painful.” She sat up then and the sheet fell away, revealing all of her to him.
“Headache’s back?” she added quickly. He must have been making a face of some sort for her to notice.
When he affirmed it, she straddled his legs so that she might have a better position and began a slow and careful massage along his temples. “Close your eyes,” she said.
He did, not only because she asked, but because the sight and feel of her was arousing him again and he had other things that needed to get settled first.
“Was it hard for you? After your mom and dad—”
“I’d rather not talk about that time. It was…difficult.”
He slowly opened his eyes, inspected her face. The hurt was there for the world to see. “Didn’t your other family help out?”
Lizzy stopped her massage and dropped her hands to her sides. Of course there had been family to help out, she thought, but that hadn’t made it any easier. Especially when the person closest to you, the one you knew you could always count on, had as good as lost it.
Dani had been inconsolable for days and then the grief had turned to anger. Anger at the police who couldn’t find the killers and later, at all the bureaucrats who had seemed so intent on covering up anything to do with her parents’ deaths. Maybe even anger at herself for not being there to stop it, Lizzy thought.
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