Driving Force

by Andrews, Jo

  He laid a hand delicately, silently, on the door, wishing that it wasn’t wood he was touching, wishing it was the softness of her skin, her hair, instead. The thought moved through him like a convulsion, deep and seismic. With a bitter sigh, he dropped his forehead against the door for a moment.

  The door opened abruptly. He jerked back in shock. After the darkness of the hallway, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the blaze of light in the bedroom. Her slender figure swam in that brilliance, the red satin of the dressing gown she wore glowing against the golden tan of her skin so that for a moment he thought the light came from her rather than from the lamps turned on full around the room. Then the vivid blue of her eyes burned up at him and his gaze snapped into focus.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said, as if no time had passed since they had spoken at the front door. Her face was strained, the fine, clear bones standing out sharply visible under the delicate satin of her skin. “I thought of all sorts of horrors. For hours, I kept seeing you lying dead in the dust while the scavengers came down on you, kept thinking that maybe Arrhan had made you into a rug the way Nick threatened to do to him. Do you know what it’s like to think of things like that? For hours! How could you put me through that?”

  “I didn’t think…” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to…”

  Her lips trembled. “Your men wouldn’t let me go and find you, and they refused to come with me. They wouldn’t let me out of the house. Those were your orders. I was almost going mad by the time Abel called.”

  “I didn’t think you’d care!”

  She grabbed the lapels of his bathrobe and tried to shake him. But of course her slight strength didn’t even rock him. She snarled furiously.

  “Of course I care! Do you think I’m inhuman?”

  “I am,” he said painfully. “I’m not human. I’m a monster.”

  She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s the way you feel, isn’t it? That I’m a monster. You’re afraid of me. Do you think I don’t know that? Why else would you be afraid of me if it wasn’t that I’m…”

  “No!” She shook at him uselessly again, then thumped her fists against his chest in exasperation. “I’m not afraid of you! I’m afraid of myself! Of the way you make me feel!”

  His breath left him in a gasp. “Sierra!”

  “It was always there between us. Right from the beginning. I’ve wanted you ever since I was fourteen.”

  “I didn’t,” he muttered, dazed. “Not until I saw you going to your graduation prom and then I… But by then you hated me.”

  “I did. But I still wanted you, which made me hate you more. I’ve never been able to stop wanting you. I want you now.”

  “Oh God!” Without thinking, he caught her to him and her arms came fiercely around his neck.

  “What you are doesn’t matter. What matters is that you drive me crazy if I even look at you.”

  “Mouse! I love y—”

  But that was the wrong thing to say. She pulled back at once, her hand flashing to cover his mouth and silence him.

  “No!” she said sharply. “I don’t want to hear that from you. I’ve already been through the hearts and flowers bit. I’ve heard it all before. All those things a guy says to get a woman into bed with him. All those sweet, flattering, meaningless lies. I want things honest between us. Honest lust, honest passion. Not dishonest promises and protestations.”

  Ian looked down at her helplessly. She was still fighting him. She didn’t trust him and there couldn’t be love if there wasn’t trust. So he knew that she didn’t love him. But she wanted him. It was enough. More than enough. He’d take anything she was willing to give him.

  “Whatever you want,” he said. “Anything you want.”

  “And no reproaches on either side when it’s time to move on,” she insisted with determination.

  “All right.”

  The rest would come, if he tried hard enough, was patient enough. He would prove it to her, make her believe in him, in herself. Make her understand that when it came to her there was no moving on for him. It would take time, but she was worth it.

  Her hands were clenched on the lapels of his bathrobe. She was trembling.

  “You’re scared,” he said gently.

  “No. Yes. Maybe.” She smiled shakily. “It’s been a long time and I was never very good at the game. I may disappoint you.”

  “Oh, no.” His hands combed through her hair, cupped her face, tilting it up to his. “Oh, no. Not possible. I’ve wanted you too long.”

  Sierra caught her breath. He meant that. She could see it. His face was strained, the skin tight across suddenly prominent bones. His breath shuddered against her mouth. He was holding back, not wanting to rush her, containing himself rigidly with ferocious control. But she could feel his body vibrating with intensity as he held her to him and his eyes had gone almost black, their pupils hugely enlarged, irises reduced to only thin rings of burning, intense green, lids heavy with passion. But behind the raw hunger and heat, those eyes were oddly helpless, oddly vulnerable.

  “Ian,” she said almost soundlessly and his mouth came down on hers.

  Not with the demanding insistence that she was expecting, but gently, tenderly. A brush of his lips over hers from corner to corner, then a slow, breathy intake that drew her lower lip in between his.

  “Oh,” she whispered at that light, sweet touch and her mouth opened to him without a thought. He was making it so easy to give in, coaxing rather than taking, hands cupping her head, parted lips brushing back and forth over hers, making her intensely aware of the tempting cave of his open mouth. Fingertips slid delicately over her face, caressing her temples, her cheekbones, the line of her jaw. The slight roughness of his calloused hands on her skin was shockingly arousing. Her bones melted and she leaned helplessly against him.

  The tip of his tongue traced her lips with agonizing slowness, first the top and then the bottom, probing the corners but not entering her mouth, tantalizing her. Then his teeth closed gently on her lower lip. She gasped, wanting more. Her hands dragged at the lapels of his bathrobe to pull his head down harder to hers and deepen the kiss. She felt him shudder. Then his mouth sealed itself to hers and his tongue was thrusting within, sliding and twining about hers.

  Flame shot through her whole body, from her toes all the way up to where their mouths were fused together. Like setting a match to tinder. She flared into one helpless blaze of fire, going involuntarily onto her tiptoes to press more of herself to him.

  He made a little strangled sound in his throat and his arms swept about her waist and shoulders, locking her tight against him. They kissed and kissed again, passion taking over, mouths twisting greedily, hungrily together. He took a stumbling step forward, turning. Then her back was against the door frame and his weight was heavy and glorious upon her.

  Her thighs parted, receiving him between them as he lifted her almost off her feet. She felt the pressure of his swollen cock hard against her core through both their robes. Her legs lifted without her volition, thighs clenching about his hips to hold that rigid hardness to her.

  “Yes,” she muttered. “Yes.”

  Her arms tightened about his neck and she strained herself to him. She had never felt anything like this before, this firestorm of pleasure at just his mouth on hers and the feel of his body, hard and urgent and vibrating with desire against her.

  His mouth raked down her throat. She caught her breath at the way that felt, the sheer delight of the sensation, his parted lips smooth against her skin, the pressure of his teeth inciting behind them, that hot, moist suction. His lips burned downward into the V of her robe and her head fell back weakly, her hands clenched on his shoulders. She felt him press his face between her breasts and gasped, arching involuntarily to him.

  “Ian!”

  He scooped her up suddenly. The room swirled around her. She felt as if she were being whirled dizzyingly through space and then as
if she were falling. The next second she was lying on her back in her bed and he was leaning over her, one knee on the mattress, staring down at her, his eyes a blaze of heat.

  “God, you’re beautiful! All silk and fire.” He reached out and slid his fingers down her hair, ran his spread hands lingeringly over the satin of her robe, over her breasts and her belly to her bent leg, bare where her robe had fallen open around it. “Silk over silk over silk.”

  His hand slipped over her skin, then his mouth took its place, raking down her leg from thigh to ankle. She shuddered helplessly. That felt amazing, his lips moving on her skin, the wet slickness of his tongue along the top of her thigh, down her leg, over the inside of her anklebone. The lazy sensuality of that unexpected action sensitized her whole body. Goose bumps rose on her arms and her pussy throbbed. Her heels dug into the mattress and she caught his bathrobe and yanked at him.

  “Ian, come on!”

  She wanted him in her, wanted him filling her, couldn’t wait. Peter had never made her feel this way—this desperate urgency, this violent need. She was shocked by herself, by the rawness, the wanton shamelessness of her hunger for him.

  He eased down onto his side beside her, smiling. “What?”

  “Don’t tease.”

  “Who’s teasing?”

  His hands untied the sash of her robe and folded a lapel back, baring her breast. She hadn’t waited to pull on her nightgown when she had sensed him outside her door, just yanked on her robe. She didn’t have anything on under it. She heard his breath catch in his throat as he looked at her naked breast, and at the heat of that focused stare, her hands came up unthinkingly to cover herself.

  “No, don’t,” he said. “I need to see. You’re so lovely.”

  He meant that. She could hear the raggedness of his breathing, see the flush of aroused color across his cheekbones and the naked desire with which he was looking at her. Suddenly she felt beautiful, because to him she was. Her breath left her in a little gasp and her hands lifted.

  “I’ve wanted this for so long,” he murmured. His hand closed over the fullness of her breast, caressing it, weighing it in his palm. Then his head came down and his mouth closed over her nipple.

  She cried out with sheer pleasure. His tongue had gone sandpapery again, the way it had back when he was fevered. It rasped on her nipple and the sensation was incredible.

  His lips opened wide on her breast and he drew as much of it into his mouth as he could. Then he sucked, a strong pull that went right down to her core.

  “Ohmigod, Ian!”

  She almost shot right off the bed, her nipples turning into diamond-hard points in an instant and her back arching. He made a purring sound of satisfaction and thrust away her robe, his mouth moving to her other breast, his calloused hands sliding across her body, kneading and stroking. The raspiness of his tongue and of his hands was exquisitely, devastatingly pleasurable. She clung to him, shuddering with delight, nails digging into the terrycloth of his bathrobe.

  “I knew,” he muttered. “I knew it would be like this.”

  She hadn’t had a clue, hadn’t even known she was capable of feeling this way. Her bones were melting and every cell in her body had sprung to quivering life.

  “You want me,” he said with deep satisfaction and a kind of disbelieving awe.

  “Oh God, yes!” she gasped. “I want you.”

  She had never wanted anything as much as she did him, wanted him inside her, filling her, stretching her.

  “I never thought this would ever happen,” he whispered. “The two of us. Like this.”

  “I wouldn’t let it, couldn’t admit what I felt about you.” She shoved desperately at his bathrobe. “Take that off! Want your skin. Want your skin on mine.”

  “God!” He tore out of the bathrobe and flung it blindly away. Her robe was already gone. They both groaned as their naked bodies finally met, pressing together, skin sliding against skin.

  “Oh, yes,” she sighed. Oh, the way he felt! Her hands slid over him, exploring the strong swells and hollows of that beautiful body. She heard his breath hiss through his parted lips at her touch. “Oh, Ian, come on.”

  “What’s the rush?” he muttered.

  “Can’t wait!” No one had ever made her so wanton and needy before, desperate for him. Maybe this time she would get to feel what everybody said she was supposed to feel, that release that Peter had always achieved but she never had. Surely Ian would give her that.

  If only he would come into her! If only he would just do it!

  His weight was heavy between her thighs, his body sliding over her in knowing, deliberately inciting movements, the length of his engorged cock rubbing along and against and into her slick folds as his hips jerked in involuntary spasms against her. Every inch of her body was aflame. She was burning up with exquisite sensation.

  “We haven’t even started,” he murmured. “I like to take my time. I like to make it last. I’m not ready for it to be over yet.”

  “You’re ready.” She could feel how hard he was, massively aroused, could feel the way he was shuddering as he fought to restrain himself. She couldn’t understand why he was holding back this way. Peter never had. Peter had always fumbled at her breasts just enough to get himself hard, then come into her. A couple of minutes later, it had all been over. That was the way it was done.

  “You’re not,” Ian retorted.

  Was he kidding? She was dying here.

  “I so am!”

  “That’s what you think. You have no idea what it could be like.”

  What was he talking about?

  “Then show me!” she snarled, beyond frustration.

  “Love to.” He slid his hand under her back, lifted her up toward him and sucked all over her breasts and belly.

  “Oh God!”

  She arched helplessly to his mouth, her nipples so tight now that they hurt. He flicked his tongue back and forth over them, licked and sucked and pulled with both his mouth and his fingertips. Peter had never spent this much time touching her. And Ian was already hard. It didn’t make sense.

  “I’ve been waiting for this too long,” he muttered, his mouth full of her breast. “Think I’m going to let it be over so soon? No damn way.”

  His raspy tongue and his hands ran over her, unbearably stimulating. Lightning flared electric along all her nerves, her blood turning to molten lava in her veins, her whole body on fire with burning, frantic urgency.

  He turned and twisted her to his will, that wicked tongue, that knowing mouth and those clever, sensitive fingers working every inch of her, sliding across her body while she clung helplessly to him, incapable of thought, lost in a vast astonishment, drowning in a mind-boggling storm of sensation.

  “What…?”

  He had slid down her and was now sucking up her inner thigh, nibbling and nipping at her flesh as he moved higher. She suddenly realized where he was headed.

  “Ian…!”

  His tongue ran along the crease between her thigh and torso. She felt the breath of his laughter against her skin.

  “Hasn’t anyone ever done this to you?”

  No one had. She had read about it but never experienced it, and it was at once shocking and embarrassing.

  “So beautiful,” he muttered against her mound. His thumbs were spreading her labia apart, opening her to him. “And so wet for me.”

  “Wait… Oh!”

  That raspy tongue had found her swollen clit, his lips were suckling at it. Her whole body bucked at the thunderbolt of intense pleasure that flashed through her.

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod!”

  She felt him smile as he worked at her. Her body thrashed involuntarily and he had to grip her hips to hold her steady for him.

  “It gets better.”

  How could it possibly get better? she thought, but was way beyond the point of coherent speech.

  Two long fingers slid into her, curved slightly upward, pumping slowly, searching for and then finding so
me spot of ultra-sensitive tissue inside her.

  “God!”

  She couldn’t even think anymore. Her mind had completely gone to lunch. There was nothing but this agonizing pleasure that was so intense that it was close to pain. She could only feel. And whimper and thrash and moan under him as his mouth worked her clit and his fingers stroked her G-spot, driving her higher and higher.

  Her body was suddenly beyond her control, writhing shamelessly, helplessly, while he played her like a violin. Her hands caught at his head, digging into his thick hair to hold his mouth to her. Then she realized what she was doing, jerked her hands away in embarrassment, dug her fingers into the mattress instead to keep from clutching at him. He hummed reprovingly and the sound vibrated through her clit as he sucked on it.

  “Ohhh, don’t…” But she didn’t know what she meant to say, whether it was “don’t stop” or “don’t do that”.

  Something in her built and built like a spring being wound tight, straining toward some unknown immensity she had been vaguely aware of before, but which had always been just out of her reach.

  “Ian!” she whispered. “What’s happening?”

  He laughed softly. “Don’t you know?”

  She didn’t know. But she wanted to, desperately.

  “Want you in me,” she cried and he paused.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Want to be in you the first time you come for me.”

  He was suddenly above her, the length of him covering her, chest and stomach and hips, his weight on his elbows on either side of her. He made an odd sort of movement, a kind of side to side twisting of his hips, settling himself between her thighs, making himself comfortable.

  It felt wonderful. He felt wonderful. Her body arched involuntarily to his, the soles of her feet sliding up the backs of his calves and her hands rising to grip his shoulders and pull him down to her.

  “Oh, yes,” she sighed. “Oh, yes.”

  He smiled and kissed her softly, her mouth and her eyes and her temples and her chin. She could taste herself on his lips. Instead of distressing her, it was shockingly arousing.

  His cock was pressing against her pussy, hard and thick and long. So big, she thought. So big. How is it ever going to fit?