by Nancy Warren
He thought she might balk. Instead she swiftly stripped off her shorts, leaving her in nothing but a cropped, tight T-shirt and one of those thong things by way of underwear. He damn near lost it right there.
But the thing he needed most was upstairs in his bedside table. With a silent groan, he leaned his head on the door frame, which only gave him a better view of Annie, all eager for him in the back seat, the little jewel in her navel winking at him.
Then he remembered. “Your bag. Where’s your bag?”
“I don’t know. I dropped it, I think.”
He found it in seconds on the ground beside her car. Rummaging through, he gave a silent crow of triumph. The open box of condoms was still there. He stuck them in his pocket.
He eased into the back seat, then shut the door with the quietest of clicks, plunging them into darkness. In his haste, he banged his elbow on a headrest, and his knee got tangled up in his bathrobe.
“I’m too old for this,” he grumbled, groping around until he found her breasts.
“Or not.”
She chuckled softly. “Not too old, but definitely too big. You’re squishing me.”
With more grunting and shuffling and bumping of body parts, which only inflamed them more, they found a better position, sitting facing each other. Ignoring his cramped knees, he reached out and touched the soft flesh of her thighs.
With a little whimper, she opened her legs to him.
He made her wait just a little bit while he savored the soft tenderness of the inside of her thighs inch by soft, sweet inch, until at last he reached higher and cupped the crisp warmth of her nest of curls.
Even as she sighed against him, his hand stalled. “What happened to your underpants?”
“They melted,” she whispered.
When he cupped the moist heat of her, he almost believed it. Beneath his middle finger he felt the slick wetness that told him she was as excited as he. Unable to stop himself, he slid that finger slowly deeper, letting her suck him in like hot quicksand.
Her head fell back, and her hips arched against him. She was so slick and so very hot. Crazy little sounds were coming from her lips, and deep within her he could feel a trembling begin. He plunged a second finger into her, and just like that she shattered.
He leaned toward her, wanting to taste her.
“Wait. Wait,” Annie panted, pulling back.
He gazed at her dumbly, knowing he’d gone too far to stop now. She’d have to really, really want to call a halt before he’d give up on what they’d started, and one glance at her heated cheeks and drugged-looking eyes was enough to confirm that she didn’t want to stop any more than he did.
What she wanted, he soon discovered, was to take control.
And he was happy to let her.
She straddled him, grunting when she hit her head on the roof, then dug into his pocket and efficiently sheathed him, turning it into a caress that left him burning for her.
She didn’t make him wait long, but spread herself over him and slowly eased him into her. He felt the slight pull as she closed around him, so tight, so hot.
He wanted to plunge and thrust wildly, but he held himself rigidly still until she was ready.
“You are so big,” she gasped once she held him completely inside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, contrite. “I should have warned you.”
She giggled happily. “It’s okay. Really.”
Then she started moving, and he stopped thinking. And pretty soon he lost all control and plunged and thrust while she rode him until they both cried out and slumped against each other, spent and gasping.
He patted the leather seat beneath them. “Good thing this baby’s got four-wheel drive. That was some wild ride.”
10
NOW THAT the first urgency was spent, they had time to go more slowly. But he’d had enough of the cramped back seat.
He dropped a kiss on her tousled hair. “Let’s go to my room.”
“But
Emily
might—”
“The door locks. Come on.”
While she scrambled into her panties and shorts, he tied his bathrobe, returned the condoms to her bag and locked both their vehicles.
Then they crept into the house and up to his bedroom, pausing outside Em’s room just long enough to confirm the regular, even breathing of a child’s deep sleep.
Once inside his bedroom, he flicked on the bedside lamp, and she looked around her with obvious interest. “It’s nice. Different than I expected. More…”
He watched her eyes scan the Scandinavian decor he’d liked so much he hadn’t bothered changing it when he bought the house. Instead he’d purchased pale wood furniture of sleek Danish design to match. “More what?”
“Sexy, I guess.”
“Haven’t you seen it before?”
“No. I was curious. But I didn’t want to pry.”
He liked that. That she’d stayed out of his room. She had a lot of class, this crazy clown with the bra phobia. And speaking of bra phobia, he caught the outline of her breasts against the thin cotton of her little shirt, and his libido roared back even stronger than before as he studied the round swell of breast, the peak jutting teasingly forward. His fingers utterly ached to take that tiny peak, and its twin, well in hand.
He shut the door with a click, leaning behind him to lock it securely.
Her eyes widened when she saw what he was doing, and for a second he thought she’d flee. “I’m not used to locked doors.” Then she seemed to pull herself together and smiled her tempting smile.
Leaning against the door, he watched her flit around the room, picking up his aftershave, uncapping and sniffing. Turning the security industry magazine he kept at his bedside toward her so she could read the headlines, then grimacing. He could tell her he’d been reading the dullest thing he could find trying to bore himself to sleep when only a wall separated them and he’d been driving himself crazy with images of her naked in that bed next door.
But he didn’t. He let her take her time, her hands lighting on his things and passing on, almost like swift caresses. In some women it would be nervousness making them act this way, but it wasn’t that with Annie. He felt she was using the opportunity to get to know him better, as though his things gave away secrets to his personality. Which, come to think of it, they probably did. He tried to see his room through her eyes and figured he’d seem as dull as she already thought he was.
Still, she was here with him. And she hadn’t come to his room to show him her new juggling trick.
As soon as the tour of his room ended, he planned to prove to her that he had a few tricks of his own.
The way she touched his things was a kind of slow teasing. He was getting turned on seeing her run a finger over his hairbrush. And something tingling in the air between them told him she was getting turned on, too. They’d taken the edge off, but both knew what was going to happen between them—and she’d chosen to draw out the waiting.
“What’s this?” she asked softly, reaching for a wooden frame half hidden behind a lamp on his dresser.
“Nothing,” he said, grabbing for it.
She batted his hands away as a big grin split her face. Pressing the photograph to her chest, she raised her eyes skyward and cooed, “My hero.”
He felt an unaccustomed heat mount his cheeks. He’d been so young in that photo, so proud of his new RCMP dress uniform. He should pack the infernal thing away in a box somewhere.
She gazed at the picture, then at him, then at the photo. “If you ever want to render me completely helpless, a love slave to your every desire, just put this thing on.”
He thought she was joking until he realized her breathing was getting jerky. Her finger traced his outline in the photograph. “Those jodhpurs. That hat. The sexy red jacket. Those boots.” She practically moaned. “Especially those boots.”
She began to sing softly, “When I’m calling youooo-ooo…”
He
’d had enough of the teasing. “You watch too much TV,” he informed her, advancing purposefully. He took the picture firmly from her hands and placed it on the bedside table, then reached for her shirt.
She shot him a perky, provocative glance.
He’d barely been able to see anything in the car. He wanted to see all of her. Taste her, touch her everywhere. Swiftly he pulled the shirt over her head.
As he’d already divined, she wasn’t wearing a bra. Two of the most gloriously perfect breasts it had ever been his privilege to see taunted his gaze. Small but firm, they were as perky as her attitude, and as sexy. He leaned in for a kiss, saw her mouth purse to say something and changed direction, moving south to her breast.
She didn’t talk, she sang. “Will you answer too…ooh…”
Her voice petered out in a sigh, and he sucked a little harder at the perfect berry in his mouth. A faint scent of jasmine hovered between her breasts as he tongued his way from one peak to the other.
The beauty of a woman who wore so little clothing, he soon realized, was how quickly he could strip her naked. A little yank, and the shorts and thong came off in one motion.
He gazed at her slowly, taking in her beauty leisurely, allowing himself only to look, not to touch—not yet.
Apart from looking both delectable and aroused, she appeared…happy. He’d been with women who dived under the covers and only made love in pitch darkness and those who were coy and provocative when naked, but he never recalled seeing a woman just so darned happy to shed her clothes.
“What are you grinning about?” she challenged him.
“You. You seem to like being naked.”
“Mmm, I do.” She opened her arms wide and fell backward onto the bed where she shifted luxuriously, her skin pearly against the navy bedspread. “I feel so free and unrestricted when I’m naked. I should belong to a nudist colony.”
“Might be kind of cold in a Canadian winter,” he suggested, then grinned.
“Course, I’d be happy to warm you up…anytime.”
While he talked he dropped his robe and tried to be equally comfortable in his naked skin while she lay there, inspecting him with unabashed concentration.
HE WAS even more gorgeous out of his clothes than he was in them, Annie mused, letting her gaze travel from his broad shoulders and muscular, hair-sprinkled chest to the flat belly and finally lower.
“Mmm.” She almost purred at the proudly upstanding erection. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he’d been lifting weights with that baby, it seemed so toned and muscular.
His thighs were a little thicker than average, bulging faintly with muscle. He could probably stop a speeding train with that body, she mused.
Her breasts felt tingly and amazingly sensitized from where he’d sucked at them. They were still faintly damp, and the air caressed them, reminding her of how exciting his touch had been. The sex in his car had been intense and mind-blowing. Now she wanted to take time getting to the main event. She was curiously lazy, prolonging each moment of waiting, loving being here with this very special man.
A flutter of unease crossed her belly. It felt almost like fear, but even as she named the emotion it was gone, and she knew it was ridiculous. She had nothing to fear from her gentle Mountie. It was normal that a healthy, unattached male and female living in the same house would start getting attracted to each other. This was the perfect way to let off a little steam.
He sank to the mattress beside her and ran his fingers over her face in a gesture full of tenderness. She wasn’t looking for tenderness or anything that smacked of deeper feelings, the kind that might get hurt when she said goodbye.
That fluttery, scary feeling returned, even stronger, as a surge of answering tenderness filled her being. Determined to change the mood, she tilted her face, captured a finger in her mouth and bit softly, then started teasing it with her tongue.
He removed his hand and replaced it with his mouth. Just the feel of those strong but soft lips on hers had her melting into him. Warm and hair-rough, his skin rubbed against her while she wrapped herself around him like a vine.
The kiss built from light pressure to a hot, deep mating of tongues. Everywhere their flesh touched she burned, but most especially the soft place between her thighs where his erection naturally seemed to rub back and forth.
It was building up almost too fast. She felt frighteningly out of control and yet achingly empty. She nudged her hips forward, needing him inside her.
But he made her wait. “Not yet,” he whispered, shifting away. Instead he moved his mouth downward. He took about a thousand years getting to her breasts, so long did he spend kissing and nuzzling her neck. Her breasts got another eon of attention, bathed by his teasing tongue while the tormenting heat built and tortured her.
He didn’t seem clued in to how much she needed him right this second. Every time she tried to remind him in subtle little ways, like trying to roll on top of him, he pushed her right back where he wanted her and then, if anything, seemed to go even slower.
The man was completely maddening. She was so frustrated she wanted to scream. At last he finished with her breasts and moved down—all the way to her ribs.
She wriggled her hips around a little, in case he needed a hint, and she felt him smile against her burning skin. He was torturing her deliberately!
She gasped, “You are going to pay for this.”
Another millennium passed while he kissed and licked every inch of her belly, taking extra time around the belly ring. “I can’t believe how much this thing turns me on,” he admitted.
He shifted away, and she heard the bedside drawer slide open and then the rustling that told her he was protecting her, as usual. Yeah.
Finally.
But not so. He parted her thighs wide and settled himself between them. Then he parted her most intimate place with his thumbs and gazed at her. He was so close she could feel his breath wafting across the burning, needy core of her.
She couldn’t take much more of this. She grasped the bedcovers on either side.
“Please,” she begged.
Then his tongue was on her, and she thought she would die right then and there from the intensity of sensation. She was somewhere outside herself, able to hear her sobbing cries and the ragged panting that passed for breathing but helpless—her body belonged to him and he played her like a symphony.
When she was certain she could take no more, he raised himself above her and thrust home, hard and deep. Nobody had ever filled her so completely.
He didn’t close his eyes. They stayed open, gazing right into hers. And because he didn’t, she wouldn’t. So they stared into each other’s eyes while he entered her fully. The fear was back, along with a new emotion so warm she wanted to cry.
She reached up, planning to cup her hand around the back of his head and pull him down to kiss him, but he caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips. She watched the gesture, shocked to notice that her fingers were trembling.
Just as his body penetrated hers, so did he seem to be forcing some kind of penetration into her mind and heart as he was watching her. And she was staring right back, fascinated by the way the black pupils dilated into the blue, blue iris. Iris was exactly the right color, she mused dazedly. His eyes were the smoky blue of the Siberian irises her grandmother used to grow. Old-fashioned plants with great staying power.
A faint sheen of sweat on his forehead told her he wasn’t as in control as he was pretending.
“Annie,
I—”
She grabbed his head and planted her lips over his, arching her hips at the same time. A little growl rumbled against her mouth, and then he plunged into her again and again, letting go of all that control.
He was so hard, and filled her so completely, she felt her body clinging to him with each wet slide, arching even as he pounded down. The trembling had spread from her fingers to her entire body. Wordless sounds of pleasure and need filled the air, hers s
oft and high, his low and rumbling.
It was too much. Her heart was hammering so hard she felt as if she couldn’t breathe fast enough to keep up. She was panting, reaching up, up, up… And then a swamping great wave came under her and lifted her high on its crest. Wave after wave rocked her very soul while she clung to Mark, who rode with her all the way.
The waves continued, ebbing until she was deposited lightly back to earth.
It wasn’t just physical. An equally powerful wave of emotion filled her eyes as she lay with her head against his shoulder, watching the sweat-dampened hair rise and fall as his breathing slowly quieted.
She blinked back the tears, refusing to give a name to the emotion that flooded her.
