by July Dawson
He grinned at that and then kissed me hard. When he pulled back, I followed him again, wanting more of his lips on mine.
"I always mean what I say," he promised. Then, never willing to let sweet words linger, he sat on the edge of the tub and swiveled to splash his legs in. He offered me a hand. "You must be freezing."
I shook my head as I took a seat on the side of the tub. Rob lowered his head to kiss the tops of my naked breasts. One of his hands cupped my breast, the sudden warmth and roughness of his touch making my spine arch.
Rob grinned. "Let me warm you up."
I wrapped my legs around his narrow waist, my heels sliding against his muscular calves. He massaged my breast roughly, his palm hardening my nipple. I reached through the water for him, drew him towards me to press his length against my core. I reeled his body in even tighter against me with my thighs, eager for him now, and he grinned. Lord, I ached for him.
He slid into me, stretching me out pleasantly. He held back, easing out. He kissed my hair one more time, then anchored my hips with his hands as he began to plunge in and out, fast and rhythmic.
Hot water swirled around my legs, but even though the rest of my body was exposed to the cool dawn air, my skin flushed with heat. My hands knit themselves on his shoulders, and as the heat bloomed into orgasm, I pulled myself up out of the water, against his body. Even as I wanted more of him, the intensity of my building orgasm felt like too much.
But Rob still held my hips tightly, and I couldn't escape the bloom of pleasure that broke over me like the waves crashing below us. Rob's fingers tightened on my hips, holding me close as he came too.
I leaned back, bracing my hands on the side of the tub. I knew there was still high color in my cheeks, and my hair felt like a wet, tangled mess around my shoulders, but I pretended to be nonchalant. "Time for breakfast?"
"Let's fuel up and do that all over again," Rob said. Some rogue thought changed his face, from playful lust to a tensing around his eyes and jaws. I glanced past them, looking for a threat, but that expression was gone the next moment.
"What's wrong?" I asked. Answer me, Rob; just tell me what was going on. Be the man I can trust and not just the man who wants to protect me.
Rob took my hands and drew me into the hot bubbling, water with him. "Thought about my to-do list. Sorting out the chaos can wait a little longer. Until everyone else wakes up.”
“I don’t want this to be a distraction,” I said.
He drew one of my hands up to his lips to kiss my palm, his beard stubble a sensual tickle. "Naomi. I don't know how I'd get through this madness without you."
2
Rob
I held the basement door open for Naomi, and we stepped onto the tile of the hall alongside the kitchen and garage. Naomi padded in front of me towards the stairs back up to our room, crossing the gold-drenched floor of the foyer. The long windows overhead soaked everything in warm light.
Rebecca was coming down the stairs, impeccably dressed in a pearl-gray suit and heels so preposterously high they would make a normal woman stagger. She gave Naomi a once-over, then turned those judgmental cool eyes on me, as if she knew exactly what we had been up. "I'm going with Liam to pick up Josh from the airport."
He nodded.
"Have you heard anything from Nicholas?" Rebecca was the only person in the universe who called the youngest Delaney brother Nicholas.
"He's on a mission. Can't come home." I glanced longingly up the stairs at Naomi's adorable ass, wrapped in the damp spandex of her swimming suit, as she continued up to the second floor.
Rebecca shook her head disapprovingly.
"It's not his fault," I said, because even if I didn't care about the woman's approval, I didn't want her to think less of one of my brothers. "SEALs don't really get those kinds of choices."
Her beautiful face was unmoved. "Are you coming with us?"
"No." I nodded to Joe, who was crossing the foyer towards them. "But Joe, and a Rook and Castell team, will be with you."
"Whatever will you do by yourself in this fortress?" she asked archly. "Have a good morning, Rob."
"Well, we do have cable." I smiled tightly at her before I continued up the stairs. She didn't approve of my rekindled romance with Naomi. As proper as she was, she probably wouldn't have approved of what we'd just done in the hot tub, either, but she would mind it less if I did that kind of thing with Kate.
When I stepped into my room, I could hear the rush of the water in the shower and see the wisps of steam already escaping from the open bathroom door. I locked the door behind me and left my trunks on the rug, eager to see Naomi again. I could imagine her in the shower, with the water streaming across her petite, athletic curves.
The Delaney beach house was fully furnished, but had an empty feel to the rooms because no one was ever here anymore. My brothers and I were too busy in the military, and before my father Mitch had been attacked, he'd lived in the city for the last several years. Perhaps the house where he'd raised us boys had been too full of painful memories once we grew up and fled the rich, indolent life we'd been raised for. The emptiness of my childhood room, now filled with expensive furniture but no personal touches, always made me feel a bitter twist of nostalgia.
But when I stepped onto the radiant-headed, Italian tile, which was warm under my bare feet, and saw Naomi's olive skin as a blur through the steam, the traces of sadness faded. Naomi smiled at me, her three-cornered grin radiant. "Join me?"
I stepped into the tub, the hot spray hitting my sore muscles, and she handed me a shampoo bottle.
"I see, you're putting me to work." I squeezed a palmful of shampoo and began to work it through her long, dark hair, massaging her scalp. I liked the way her eyes drifted shut when she was pleased.
Water beaded like new freckles on her olive skin. I took the opportunity to drink in her beautiful face while her eyes were closed, while she couldn’t laugh at me and push me away. We were two messed-up human beings, fighting more than we made love and making love more than we talked. I knew it was all crazy.
But our long shared history made loving her feel inevitable, hopeless, no matter how ridiculous our relationship might look to people like his grandmother. I stuck my hand under the stream of water to wash away the foam, kissing the water-freckles as her eyes slowly opened, as if waking from a dream.
"You know, I'm a big believer in equality," I said, kneeling in the tub to kiss the faint curve of her belly, the paler skin where her thigh joined her hip.
"You'll make me fall right over," she said, resting her fingers in my hair.
"But I'll catch you," I promised. I pushed her gently down onto the tan tiled bench at the back of the shower as the hot water coursed over us both, separating her reluctant thighs with my hand. I paused, quirking an eyebrow at her. "May I?"
She grinned at that. "You may, if you must."
"We do what we must, because we can." I returned to kissing her legs, sliding down between her thighs until I could pulse into her core with her tongue. Naomi wrapped her legs around me, making a small sound of pleasure, and I rested my hands on her thighs, holding her still for me to please.
Naomi's moans seemed almost to come in time with my movement, spurring me to greater efforts as she leaned her head back against the tile, shaking her head back and forth as her long dark hair danced across her breasts.
Her toes lifted off the floor. She pushed me away half-heartedly. "Stop! That was lovely, but I can't take it anymore."
I kissed the inside of her thigh. "Are you sure? You can't take just a little bit more?"
There was a mischievous gleam in her golden brown eyes as she reached for me. "Maybe just a little."
The water streaming over our bodies made our skin slick as our hands fumbled with each other, trying to find the right position in the shower. I was so tall, and she was petite. Se held my cock in her hands and raised her eyebrows at the impossibility of finding a way to line ourselves up.
Naomi slipped on the t
ile, and I caught her with my hands around her waist.
"You need some of those non-slip rubber treads for the tub."
"I do not want to talk about bathmats right now," I told her. Taking a seat on the tile bench, I drew her towards him. "You've put me off long enough, being so inconveniently short."
"The problem is that you're so inconveniently tall." But no matter how much Naomi disapproved of my height, she kissed me anyway. Her kisses deepened, her fingers sinking deep into my shoulders, hard enough for me to feel her need.
Naomi straddled my lap, her arms around my neck. I began to rub myself against her until she moaned again.
She pushed herself down on my lap. I drew a breath in at the feel of Naomi enveloping me, warm and tight, her body magnifying the comforting warmth of the shower. I leaned back against the tile, feeling the steam in the room and the steam of our bodies meeting. She slowly lifted herself up until my tip brushed against her, suddenly cool without the cover of her body, and then she sank down and I exhaled again.
I couldn't take it anymore. I slid my hands under her perfect ass and began to help her rise up and then down my shaft, faster and faster, until we were both panting. Naomi leaned forward, her lips parted, and pressed her forehead against my shoulder as she moaned my name.
There couldn't be anything better in the world than that. Hearing my name on her lips, I came, wrapping my arms tight around her waist, losing myself in her.
I kissed her neck, I kissed her wet hair, until she raised her head and met my eyes. For a second, I thought I saw joy and wonder there, like it was amazing that we had found each other again after all this time.
Then Naomi smiled that mischievous smile again, that smile I loved, but I wanted to know what she was thinking the moment before.
"I am starving," she said. "Do you want to go to Abby's? Are we allowed to leave Castle Delaney if I have my handsome knight with me?"
"I thought you hated seafood," I said. She slid off the bench, and I reluctantly watched her go.
"I'm trying to be open to new things," she said.
"Well, then, I have some thoughts," I said.
"About crab cakes?"
"No. I think you should save your willingness to experiment for me." I hugged her tight against my chest, dropping a kiss in her hair, and then let her go.
Naomi grinned, not acquiescing but certainly not disagreeing, either. "I think we should discuss what you have in mind another day. Right now I really want some french fries."
"Right now, you're really maddening. How can you think about food right after that?" I followed her into the bedroom, where she drew her clothes out of a duffel bag; her body still glimmered from the shower, and I went back to get a towel.
She turned in surprise when I brushed the soft towel across her back. I knelt, wiping the towel with loving attention across her petite breasts, her flat belly, her legs. "Someone has to take care of you," I mock-scolded.
She drew in a breath as if my touch excited her, even padded in terrycloth. I stood, draping the towel around her shoulders to keep her warm until she dressed, and kissed her upturned little nose.
"I can always think about food," she said seriously.
"Maddening," I repeated, just to see her smile.
We were still playfully bickering ten minutes later as we made our way down the stairs. The big house felt too quiet with my family gone; once Josh was here, we would move Mitch into Castle Delaney, and I knew we'd never have another quiet moment with Naomi until we had sorted out exactly why someone had tortured my father, what they were trying to retrieve. Who they were.
Naomi swung open the garage door in front of him and took a step down the stairs. It was darker than it should have been in the morning, as if the windows in the bay doors and the skylight had been covered over.
I realized something was wrong. I grabbed for Naomi's arm to yank her back out of danger, stepping forward to slide my body between her and the deep darkness of the garage. My fingers wrapped around her upper arm, but before I had a firm grip, she was yanked away. Naomi cried out in surprise and pain.
Electricity jolted through my body. I went rigid, my body locked up even though my mind still raced, pain tingling through every nerve of my body. Taser.
I fell down the steps to the floor, my body folding up the second the electricity stopped. Every nerve in my body kept screaming. I tried to scramble up, bending my body forward but my muscles contracted wildly and I couldn't sit up. I threw myself to my side, my temple slamming into the cement.
I got my feet beneath me and charged up and forward, searching for a human target, someone to hit.
I was frantic to get to Naomi. We had to get out of the garage. Into the house, into the safe room, or out into the clear sunlight of the day. Someone had gotten the jump on us. We needed to get out of their trap so we'd have a better chance to fight.
I slammed into another man, a big body – not Naomi – and I slammed my forehead into the solid plastic wrapped around the other guy's head. Night vision goggles.
"Get him off me!" the guy yelled, trying uselessly to push me away. I locked my arms around the man in a bear hug, dragging him back towards where I knew the garage door must be, trying to angle the man between me and the other assailants. I had to get to the door, get some light in here and take away their advantage.
The taser hit me again. My body screamed, but I felt my new friend's body jittering too, the two of us locked together and into the flow of electricity.
For a second, the tazing stopped. My limbs stopped jerking. The other guy went down underneath me, and I could hear him cursing.
I staggered to my feet. My seeking hand found the doorknob for the external door that led out to the drive.
"Naomi!" I shouted. If I could get her out of here, nothing else mattered. The knob turned in my hand, but I couldn't get the door open. I threw my shoulder into it, already knowing it was desperate. The doors to the house were all reinforced steel to keep anyone from breeching the house from the outside.
All I could hear in the eerie darkness was the gasp of her rough breathing, muffled as if someone were holding her tight. Since I couldn’t get the door open, I charged forward again, searching for a target.
I grabbed a hard shoulder, swept with my other hand and found no Naomi, and then hammered the guy in the face with my fist. The other guy grunted, falling away, grabbing me around his waist as he recovered. I kneed him hard in the stomach.
. "God, he's a beast. Let's get him something stronger."
There was a sharp pain in my chest. I stumbled forward anyway, toward the voice, toward someone to attack to protect Naomi, but instead I found myself stumbling into a darkness that drew me deep into its web.
Also by July Dawson
If you enjoyed Kate and Kyle’s story, you’ll also enjoy these other July Dawson tales!
KILTED
Readers say…
"CUTE.
VERY CUTE.
INCREDIBLY CUTE!!
This book really took me by surprise. It was so darn hot but amazingly sweet all at once.”
"Don't let the short length fool you - this was a wonderful, emotionally deep, and enthralling story. Liam literally crashes into Josie's life, and their attraction is instantly hot. It doesn't take long for them to realize their bond is much stronger than a one-night-stand. It's a rare author that can pack so much action and emotional impact into a short novella, but this one hits it out of the park."
I live a quiet life, until the day a Scotsman in a kilt crash-lands his helicopter in my orchard.
The good news is he misses my apple trees. The bad news is that he tells me I’m still beautiful, tells me he’s going to protect me from what’s coming. He’s kisses me and then passes out. Trapped at my mountain home by a blizzard, I wait for him to wake up. Even though I know I’ve never met this gorgeous stranger before in my life, he feels familiar. Safe. Lust-worthy.
Outside in the storm, something bad is headed our
way. But inside, by the warmth of the fire and the heat in his eyes, everything is cozy. Everything is hot. I want him so badly. He looks at me like he wants me too.
It’s not like men in kilts plummet from the sky every day. I can’t pass up one day and night enjoying his mouth, his hands, his… personality. But I have to hope that one night with my strange angel will be enough.
You can find KILTED here. Read KILTED for free with your Kindle Unlimited subscription!
***This is a one-night read, a short tale that you can read in an evening. And it’s about a one-night stand that turns into a happily-ever-after. There’s no cheating, no cliffhanger, just a steamy night that’s hard to forget.***
STAGED
Readers say…
“Read in one sitting! Great second chance romance. Jen and Josh had great chemistry and love for each other.”
Ten years ago, Josh Wilde was my best friend. We went to band camp together, we experimented with kissing so we’d be ready for a real kiss, we got a little drunk together on apple brandy from his dad’s liquor cabinet. He told me he loved me, and we stopped being best friends.
Now Josh is all grown-up. He’s done what no one in Rockville ever expected: he became the rock star he said he’d be. I don’t expect him to recognize me in the crowd, and he doesn’t.
But he takes me to bed.
One night with the boy, now a man, that I loved and lost.
One night to pretend I didn’t make that stupid choice back then.
One night of steam and kisses, hoping that he remembers the way he used to want me.
One night of hoping that he wants me again.
You can find STAGED here. Read STAGED for free with your Kindle Unlimited subscription!
NAMED BY THE OUTLAW
Readers say…
“The chemistry between Kyle and Kate exploded off the pages. The battered emotion from Kate will touch your heart and make you proud when she finds her strength. Kyle is the total package, hot sexy and dominant. Ms. Dawson does it up right, it has steam, suspense, bikers, and explosive characters.”
