Ready

by Lucy Monroe

  Following the example he’d set the night before, she continued to stimulate him with her mouth.

  He jerked and bowed under her, grunting and shouting in turn until he stopped surging upward into her mouth and pulled her head away from him. She looked up at him, hoping her newfound love did not glow in her eyes, but helpless to stop herself from wallowing in the sight of him in the aftermath of his pleasure.

  He tugged her up beside him, his hands insistent until she was full against his body. He panted, his body still rigid even after his release, and his hold on her was unmistakably possessive.

  His breathing slowly went back to normal, and then he leaned above her, his dark gaze devouring her. “Thank you.”

  Such tame words for her wolf, especially when the look in his eyes was more carnal than grateful.

  “You’re welcome.” She stretched her jaw.

  He rubbed her cheeks with his thumbs. “Sore?”

  “You’re awfully big,” she said bluntly.

  “I’m sorry.” Despite the massage he tenderly gave her jaw, he didn’t sound all that sorry. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  That sounded sincere.

  She smiled. “You didn’t.” Nuzzling into him, she pressed her body as close as she could get. “I could have stopped if I’d wanted to.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Remembering how he’d tried to stop from coming in her mouth, she nodded.

  He’d been wild, but he would never force her to do anything she didn’t want to. She began to understand the rejection he’d given her that night in Texas. He really didn’t want anything that wasn’t freely given.

  He was too much a man to settle for grudging acceptance of his flesh.

  His hand slid down to her mound and his fingers trespassed on the slick, swollen folds of her feminine core.

  She vibrated with the power of her reaction to his touch.

  “Your turn,” he growled.

  Two fingers slid inside her at the same time his mouth covered one taut, aching peak. He sucked and she cried out in pleasure as he began to make love to her with his hand in a way that emulated the rhythm of full intercourse.

  In seconds, she was squirming, straining, begging for him to finish it, and he did. Starbursts went off inside her with audible force, and she had to bite her lips shut to stop from crying out her newly discovered love.

  Lise spent the morning, or what was left of it after she and Joshua showered together, writing on the cushy, overstuffed sofa. The rocking chair was too hard. She ached in places she hadn’t even felt in two years that she could never remember exercising to the point of soreness.

  This time when Joshua called her to lunch, she put her Dana down and went.

  Gingerly sliding into one of the hard kitchen chairs, she looked around. “Where’s Hotwire? I thought I heard him earlier.”

  Joshua put a bowl of steaming soup in front of her and a plate of crackers with cheese in the center of the table. “He was. He left a couple of minutes ago.”

  Spreading her napkin over her lap, she asked, “Why didn’t he stay for lunch?”

  “He had stuff to do.”

  “Oh.” She shifted in her chair, looking for a comfortable position to sit on the wooden seat. “Any news?”

  “Nitro landed in Austin thirty minutes ago and headed straight for the ranch with a rental car.”

  Which meant they’d be hearing from Jake shortly. He wasn’t going to take leaving the ranch with equanimity. If nothing else, he’d be even more convinced Lise needed to get out of Seattle.

  She took a bite of soup and realized immediately it wasn’t canned. “This is homemade.”

  Joshua shrugged. “I don’t like prepackaged foods. It’s a leftover attitude from all those packages of instant soup I was forced to consume on field marches in the army.”

  She smiled, shifting slightly again. “Makes sense.”

  “Lise, are you sore?”

  She reached for a piece of cheese and cracker. “What makes you ask?”

  “You look like you’re sitting on an unhappy porcupine.”

  She felt her cheeks heat. “Oh.”

  She hadn’t meant to be obvious, and she was sure his other sexual partners didn’t get incapacitated like this after a single night and morning of lovemaking.

  “So, are you?”

  Examining her soup for recognizable ingredients suddenly became a very important pastime. “Maybe.”

  She wasn’t looking at him, but she heard him get up and leave the kitchen. Where had he gone?

  It was really silly to be so bothered about telling him she was sore. After all, he had a big part of the responsibility. Big being the operative word, but it wasn’t just his size. It was submitting her muscles to an athletic workout they’d never seen equaled, even in her earliest days of marriage.

  When he walked back into the kitchen she was totally unprepared when he picked her right up out of her chair. “What are you doing?”

  He dropped a fluffy throw pillow from her bed on the wooden chair and then gently set her back down. “Making you more comfortable.”

  “I would have been fine,” she protested.

  His expression said, Yeah, whatever, and she subsided. It was a lot more comfortable on the pillow.

  She forced herself to say, “Thank you.”

  Sitting back down, he shrugged.

  They ate in silence for several minutes while her mind played over why she’d gotten sore, how much she’d like to do it again, and how incredibly exciting she’d found it to taste him. Images of him lying on his back, stretched out for her pleasure, inundated her mind and made her thigh muscles quiver.

  Not a good direction for her thoughts to go.

  “Did Hotwire find anything out?” Joshua had told her the other man would be researching likely suspects via the computer.

  “A couple of things.”

  “That’s great. What are they?”

  “One, he was able to back-trace the e-mails.” Joshua didn’t sound all that excited by that piece of luck.

  “Isn’t that good news?” she asked as she carefully stacked a piece of cheese on a cracker and then popped it into her mouth, all the while managing to avoid Joshua’s gaze.

  Maybe if she didn’t look at him, her imagination would behave.

  “They’re all written from different Internet access computers in libraries within an hour’s drive of Seattle.”

  “Don’t people have to sign in with their library cards to use the Internet computers?”

  “Yes, but he used other people’s names and their library card numbers.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. One of them was an eighty-year-old woman, another a ten-year-old boy. We’re fairly sure Nemesis is male and grown up.”

  She twisted her mouth at his gentle sarcasm. “How did he get them?”

  “We’re not sure. He could have hacked into a database, or done something as simple as wait for library patrons to leave their cards lying around while they looked for books or worked on the computer.”

  Lise sighed. “He’s smart.”

  “But not smart enough.” Joshua’s voice promised retribution to Nemesis when they found him.

  She believed that voice because as smart as Nemesis was, she was absolutely convinced he was no match for Joshua and his friends.

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll catch him.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I mean it, Lise. You aren’t alone anymore.”

  Her head came up at that and she met his eyes, which had the effect she’d known it would, and she started melting in interesting places that had nothing to do with the conversation at hand. “I know that. I trust you to deal with this.”

  And he’d probably never know just how hard it had been to put that trust in him and relinquish control of her life in any way, but she didn’t regret it.

  Joshua made a sound of irritation, his eyes narrowed. “Then what’s the problem
?”

  His dark gaze probed her features as if he were trying to see into her head, or maybe even as deep as her soul.

  “Nothing is wrong.”

  “Are you embarrassed?”

  “Not exactly.” Although she realized that definitely was playing a part in her feelings at the moment.

  She was amazed by the side of herself she’d discovered the night before and that morning, but self-conscious about it as well. The way she and Joshua had made love had gone against all the good-girl teaching she’d received in the small Texas town of her birth.

  “What exactly are you?”

  Hot and bothered. Sore. In love.

  And that one was just downright scary.

  “Out of my depth, I guess,” she admitted ruefully, thinking a twenty-eight-year-old woman with a successful career should not be so bound by the conventional ideas of her youth. “I’m not used to the sex thing.”

  His lips tilted, but not in a full-blown smile. He was back in semimercenary mode. “The sex thing?”

  “You know what I mean.” And she hoped he realized she wasn’t going to thank him if he tried to make her spell it out.

  “Yeah, I do. You’re really good at the sex thing. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  Right, like that was the one thing she’d be worried about. If she’d done it right. Cryin’ out loud, even she was savvy enough to figure out that a man shouting and going rigid as a fireman’s pole when he came meant she’d done it right.

  “That’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Something is making you reluctant to meet my eyes. I don’t like that, so I want you to tell me what the issue is.”

  “I like sucking you,” she admitted, revealing the thing that had surprised her the most, even if it was only a tiny portion of her behavior that so unsettled her. “A lot.”

  His face clenched and his body jerked. “Damn, sweetheart, you shouldn’t say stuff like that if you want to get any work done today.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head and laughed. “Don’t apologize. I’m glad you like going down on me, but I don’t understand why you’re uncomfortable about that.”

  “I think maybe I like it too much.” Remembering how she’d knelt in front of him in the shower and brought him to another climax with her mouth confirmed the niggling concern.

  She’d loved it. And she would have done it again if he’d asked, even though her jaw had felt stretched afterward.

  “That’s not a problem for me.”

  The way he said it made her thighs clench.

  “Does it make you feel better to know I like putting my mouth on you, too? I love the way you taste, especially after you climax.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Men are supposed to like sex.”

  He stared at her like she’d gone nuts. “So are women.”

  “I didn’t before.”

  “You didn’t like sex? At all?”

  “It wasn’t quite that bad, but I sure didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I feel things with you, sexual urges I’ve never had before.” Like wanting to take him into her mouth, wanting to taste him come.

  It probably had something to do with the intensity of her emotional feelings about him that outstripped anything she’d felt in that regard as well, but that wasn’t an area she was going to explore with him right now. If ever.

  She was vulnerable enough to this soldier of fortune who lived his life job to job without a plan for the future that included her.

  Predatory satisfaction gleamed back at her, but then, like the turning of a dimmer switch, his face lost all expression. “Are you bothered because you have those feelings with a man like me?”

  “What do you mean, a man like you?”

  “A mercenary.”

  Chapter 10

  Were all men this dense, or was it just the really primitive ones? It didn’t really matter how many other men might make such a mistake, but the fact that Joshua had done so offended her no end.

  “Of course not. I can’t believe you’d accuse me of something so shallow. Just what have I done to make you think I would ever react that way?”

  He put his hands up, like he was surrendering, when she knew he didn’t even have the word in his vocabulary.

  “Don’t bite my head off. It was a legitimate question.” But his stoic expression softened the tiniest bit.

  “Not in my book.”

  “Speaking of your book, how is it coming along?”

  Which meant talk about her unexpected issues with her newfound sensuality was over. She hoped.

  “I’m having a hard time getting focused today.”

  Which was another thing she was finding it difficult to adjust to. She was used to being able to tune out the world when she worked, but she found it almost impossible to tune him out completely—or the memories of their shared passion.

  “I’m sorry about that. Nemesis has wreaked a lot of mischief in your life, hasn’t he?”

  “Now that you’re here, dismissing him from my mind is pretty easy.” She made herself another cracker snack. “I feel safe.”

  “Good, but it’s obvious he’s still impacting you.”

  “Wondering if I’m the original fallen woman is impacting me a whole lot more than thinking about some loser who gets his kicks out of terrorizing me.”

  “You are not a fallen woman. Hell, that’s not even a condition women can aspire to anymore.”

  Trust Joshua to see it as an aspiration. She almost smiled. “The only other man I’ve ever made love with is my ex-husband.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “No. Not really. I don’t know,” she finally admitted.

  “Is it having sex with a man you don’t love or one you’re not married to that bothers you?”

  She did love him, but that wasn’t the point. “I never expected to have an affair.”

  She’d never wanted to and she honestly didn’t know how she felt about being involved in one now. Everything was such a jumble inside of her, but one truth emerged amidst the chaos.

  “I don’t want to stop making love with you. To be honest, I don’t think I could.”

  “I’m glad, because I’d hate to have to try.”

  She did smile then, relieved and happy that the compulsion was mutual. “Do you think Bella likes doing that kind of thing to Jake?” she asked curiously. “You know, making love to him with her mouth?”

  It would help if she had some close girlfriends she could ask this sort of thing, but she lived so much of her life inside her books; she had few outside friendships, none close enough for the type of discussion she was having with Joshua.

  He actually blanched. “That is not something I want to contemplate about my baby sister.”

  “See?” She glared at him, feeling vulnerable all over again. “Even you think it’s depraved behavior.”

  “Even me?”

  “You know what I mean. No one could accuse you of being inhibited.”

  “I wouldn’t have accused you of it last night, either.”

  That did not make her feel any better and she said so.

  He sighed with exasperation. “There’s nothing depraved about you liking taking me in your mouth, but a man does not want to think of his sister kissing with her tongue, much less having sex with her husband, in any way.”

  “Oh.” Duh. She’d been thinking in the abstract, or she never would have asked the question to begin with.

  She didn’t really want to know that kind of stuff about Jake, either.

  “But if it will make you feel better, I’d say it’s a safe bet Jake and Bella enjoy a complete and varied sex life.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. You do realize it is the twenty-first century don’t you?”

  “Yes, and my high school sex educat
ion teacher in Canyon Rock, Texas, called a penis a manhood and a woman’s vagina her womanhood. As far as she was concerned, a woman’s clitoris didn’t even exist.”

  “You are ten years out of high school, Lise.”

  “Well, yes, but this is the first time since then that I’ve been in a position to question my own sexual attitudes.” Sex with Mike had never been even borderline adventurous.

  Joshua reached out and ran his fingertip along the V-neckline of the light cotton sweater she’d thrown on after their shower earlier. “You’ve got damn fine sexual instincts, I’d say.”

  Her skin tingled from his touch, and she could hear her own heartbeat in her ears.

  She’d been talking about attitudes, not instincts, but his words of praise made her feel proud all the same. Despite her misgivings, she liked knowing he was so pleased with her sexuality. After her divorce, there had been times she’d wondered if she wasn’t something of a sexual amoeba.

  She didn’t feel that way now.

  Embarrassed or not, wholly comfortable with the situation or not, she felt fully alive and functioning and she liked it.

  His fingertip dipped into the valley between her breasts, under her sweater. “You’re a perfect sexual partner for me and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

  A laugh burst out of her and she pulled back from that disturbing caress with a smile. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be awfully arrogant?”

  “No.”

  It took her a second, but she realized he was serious.

  She just stared at him for something like five full seconds. “Cryin’ out loud, Joshua, are the people around you blind?”

  “No. They’ve seen what I can do. So have you.” And from the look in his eyes, he was definitely referring to the sex thing.

  She shook her head at his blatant confidence.

  “I suppose they’ve never mentioned that you’re as bossy as a rooster in the henhouse, either?” she asked, thinking how naturally he’d taken the details of her life over.

  “I’ve never had anyone compare me to a rooster before—now, a cock is a different matter.” He winked at her.

  She picked up one of the crackers and tossed it at him.

  He caught it midair and popped it in his mouth, an expression on his face that made her want to fly across the table and jump his bones.