by Jade Allen
I spread her thighs and slipped between them, leaning in until I was right there. But I had to check; I had to know she wanted this as much as I did, because I’d apparently taken leave of my senses and wanted to see just how much torture a cock could take.
I looked down into her fiery eyes, and her arms reached out for me as I did, telling me she was more than willing.
But she didn’t pull me closer. Instead, her fingers went back to tracing along the lines of the tattoos on my shoulders and chest. Damn it, I knew what she was doing, and it sent a shockwave of unadulterated pleasure through my body, so intense that my hips thrust forward of their own volition, plunging into her to the hilt.
I lunged for her lips on the next thrust, doing my damnedest to ignore the erotic way her fingers continued to move along my torso. Slowly though, as I increased my pace, she abandoned her attempt to read my life story and I felt her fingers kneading my shoulders. And before long, her nails were digging into the muscles in my back, the sting only making me harder. It was unadulterated proof that her body was rushing headlong for the end, caught up in raw pleasure.
I was so damn close, gritting my jaw and fighting with everything I had against the urge to come deep inside her. I wasn’t going to let it happen, not yet. I shifted my weight onto one arm and slipped a hand between us, finding her clit. Her hips bucked at the first brush of my finger against her, and her moans turned to cries of pleasure. I started to thrust faster, harder, and her hips reciprocated, thrusting upward to meet me.
And seconds later, the wildfire that had been blazing in her eyes burned out of control. Her back arched off the table and her gaze locked on mine as she screamed in ecstasy. And damn it, that was just too much. I’d held off as long as I could, and I’d made sure she got to come first, but I was right there. I thrust in deep one more time as her tight walls spasmed around my cock and I rocketed over the edge.
I withdrew slowly, almost as reluctantly as when I’d started, and pulled her up with me as I stood up straight. I swooped in and picked her up in my arms, and started down the hall to her bedroom. She looked up at me with surprise in her eyes.
“You didn’t think we were done yet, did you?”
She couldn’t have possibly thought I’d had enough. No way in hell.
****
“This one’s new,” she whispered, tracing the outline of El Hombre Caiman on my chest hours later. Shit, I couldn’t tell her I’d gotten it after taking down a dangerous drug lord on the coast of Colombia.
“I got it two years ago in Cuba,” I told her, closing my eyes as she touched upon the next tattoo that would be unfamiliar to her: a Viking shield and sword on my shoulder. “A one-armed man in Australia did that one. According to him, his ancestors descended from Somerled, King of the Isles.”
She’d never know the real story behind that tattoo, either.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. Her hands trailed down my arm, but she would have to lower the sheet covering us to discover any more. I considered moving it for her, more than happy to let her check out every one of the tattoos on my body if it meant she’d continue grazing over my skin with her fingertips, but she laid back down, her hand lying gently against the dragon.
A moment later, her breathing grew deeper, steadier. I don’t know how long I laid there, feeling the warmth and softness of her body against me and watching the gentle rise and fall of her back. I’d never felt more tempted to close my eyes and drift off to sleep.
But I’d gotten what I had come for. There was absolutely no reason to stay there any longer.
Reluctantly, I slid out from under her, careful not to disturb her sleeping form. A tiny crease formed between her brows, but it disappeared a moment later. I threw on my clothes silently, watching the peaceful look on her face the whole time. I wanted nothing more than to climb back in and feel her naked, peaceful body relaxed against my own, but I couldn’t, and so with one last glance, almost as if to commit every feature to memory, I crept out of the room and out of the house.
Chapter Four
Sarah
I opened my eyes reluctantly, squinting against the morning sun that filtered in through the open window. Tiny particles of dust danced in the stream of light, and I focused my attention on the display as much as I could, not ready to think about what had happened just hours before.
But there was no sense in delaying the inevitable.
I had no idea where Declan and I would have gone from there. Would it have been awkward to see each other in the light of day? Or would it have felt as natural as it had in his arms the night before? There was only one way to find out. I rolled over, my fingers already anticipating the warmth of his flesh.
But he wasn’t there. My hand fell onto the empty space he’d occupied, but the sheets were cold; he hadn’t been there in quite some time.
I fought back disappointment and forced myself to listen, to search for any sound that would tell me he was still in the house. There was no noise except for the chirping of the birds outside the window.
Declan was gone.
I groaned aloud and buried my head in the pillow. What the hell had I been thinking? I’d been determined to not be just another notch on his bedpost, but proceeded to cave like a spineless invertebrate anyway.
I had to wonder over my objections, though. It wasn’t that I had anything against one-night stands. In fact, the scope of my relationships had been little more than casual flings. So why was I so resistant when it came to Declan?
I didn’t like the answer that came rocketing to the forefront of my mind, but there it was. Declan had been so much more to me than an available body. He’d been everything I ever wanted in a man, both as a teenager and even then, as much as I might want to deny it.
Sure, he was a bad boy on the surface—a six-foot-three, motorcycle-riding, risk-taking, rule-breaking one—but I always thought I could see what was really behind the daredevil façade: a strong and courageous man who wasn’t afraid to go after what he really wanted.
But what he didn’t want—at least not for more than just a passing fling—was me. I’d pretended for a very long time that Declan was nothing more than a childhood crush, but the truth was, he’d never stopped being the man I measured all other men against. And they always came up lacking.
There seemed little point in denying it. I was just another sexual conquest to him, after a night I would never forget. How long, I wondered, would it take this time to fool myself into thinking he was nothing more than a passing infatuation?
That’s what I’d have to do, though. I wasn’t going to go chasing after a man who didn’t want to be caught. I’d made a ridiculous mistake and had no one but myself to blame for the consequences.
I’d wanted Declan since I was a kid. I’d finally had him, and it was time to move on.
And move on, I did, downing a cup of coffee and hopping into the shower before work. It didn’t help that I could clearly remember the feel of his hands on me; that my skin felt ultra-sensitized even to my own touch with memories of Declan fresh in my mind.
Fortunately, a morning spent dealing with about a half-dozen ear and throat infections, an elderly patient with a broken hip, a patient with a work-related saw injury, and a two-year-old with a piece of cereal stuck up his nose was enough to help keep me from harping on the previous night.
“So, who the hell was that hot guy you were having lunch with yesterday?” Jennifer probed the moment she slid into the seat across from me in the cafeteria.
On a positive note, Jennifer was relatively new to town, so she had absolutely no idea about my teenage obsession with Declan. Unfortunately, Jennifer was also nosy as hell, and there was no way she was going to leave the subject alone until she had all the juicy details.
“He’s just an old friend, Jen. We grew up together, and he flew into town the other day for a family reunion. That’s all there is to it.”
“Damn, Sarah, by the way he was looking at you, you could’ve had him any
way you wanted, and twice on Sunday.”
Jennifer’s comment had me thinking about the number of times I’d ‘had’ him in one night, and I fought valiantly against the flush of color I could feel creeping into my cheeks.
“You did have him, didn’t you? This must be good if you’re not spilling the details.”
I’d always gotten along well with Jennifer, but right then, I wanted to strangle her. I didn’t want to think about Declan, never mind talk about him. And what was I supposed to say? I’d had the best sex of my life with him and then he’d run off in the middle of the night?
“There aren’t any details to spill. Now, why don’t you tell me how your date went with Brad the other night?” The best way to get the spotlight off me was to put it on her, and she took the bait, veering off into a twenty-minute description of everything from the restaurant’s décor to the way lucky guy number thirty-three looks first thing in the morning. By the time she finished, our lunch break was over, and I’d never been more relieved to get back to work in my entire life.
The afternoon flew by just as quickly as the morning had; it was a rather busy day in the emergency ward, and soon enough, I was already changing out of my scrubs for the day. Maybe the cosmic forces were giving me a small reprieve, keeping my mind from harping on last night’s disaster.
So much for that theory, I thought a moment later as the ER’s doors opened and Declan walked through. Was it too much to hope he’d choked on his dinner or was in the throes of some allergic reaction…any other reason that would explain why he was here looking directly at me?
Of course not. He looked too damned unruffled to be suffering from anything that would require medical assistance.
“Hey, Sarah,” he said with a wry smile that turned up the corners of his full lips; the same ones that had just explored every sensitive place on my body.
I struggled to keep my wits about me and glared up at him with the most uninterested look I could muster. “What can I do for you, Declan?”
“You can come with me.”
“What?”
“You’re done for the day here, right?”
“Well, yes, but… I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“How would you know if it’s a good idea when you don’t know where I want to take you?”
“Call it a hunch.”
“Only one way to find out,” he said with that damn grin again.
I’d wondered why he’d chosen to show up at my work, but in the brief minute since he’d walked through the door, every head in the ward had turned in our direction, and I knew the answer. If I didn’t want to cause a scene, or create even more theory and conjecture than was no doubt already circulating through the room, I’d comply.
“Fine.”
With a victorious gleam in his eyes, he motioned toward the exit and I followed, thinking how much I’d love to strangle the asshole. Once we got to the parking lot though, I put on the brakes. “So, where are we going?”
He slowed his step but didn’t stop. The cocky bastard expected that I’d continue to follow along blindly. “You’re not really getting the whole concept of a surprise, are you, Sarah?”
“I don’t like surprises, Declan.”
“Yes, you do.”
Why the hell did he have to know so much about me? Sure, I liked surprises…good surprises like birthday parties and puppies for Christmas. I had a feeling he didn’t have any puppies hiding anywhere, and it wasn’t my birthday.
He stopped about halfway through the parking lot next to a vehicle that looked nothing like the dilapidated clunker he’d been driving around in the other day: it was a motorcycle. He expected me to get on that thing? And with absolutely no idea where we were going?
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I eyed the deathtrap warily.
“What? Have the years turned you into a chicken?”
“No.” I wasn’t a chicken; I had just seen my fair share of motorcycle accidents and had no desire to wrap myself around a pole.
And yet, when he eyed me with the glint of challenge in his gaze, I found myself reaching for the extra helmet. Had I changed at all? Or would I forever be the strong, independent woman who suddenly didn’t have a solid bone in her body when it came to Declan?
He smiled triumphantly, not even bothering to try to hide it, and climbed on the bike. I got on behind him, doing my best to keep some space between us, which wasn’t an easy feat on a motorcycle.
He pulled out of the lot and onto the town’s main road, and I couldn’t deny that he handled the bike like an expert, as if it were an extension of his own body. I could feel every shift of his hard, muscular frame and the resultant change in the bike’s direction a split second later. And to my own surprise, I found myself relaxing, closing my eyes and enjoying the sensation of the wind against my limbs and the heat of the man in front of me.
I barely noticed when he slowed sometime later, but the spell broke quickly as he came to a stop and I reluctantly opened my eyes.
I recognized the surroundings right away, as well as the grand, two-story expanse of a home that stood tall in front of me. Several cars were lined up down the long, winding driveway—cars that were all in pristine condition, each one sporting a foreign name that alone told onlookers it cost more than some people made in a decade.
What the hell were we doing at Declan’s mother’s house? I hadn’t been there since before I’d gone away to school. Even though I’d been back in town for months, it had just felt strange to drop in on people I hadn’t seen in years. “What are we doing here?”
“Visiting.”
I was going to get whiplash if he kept this up. He disappears into thin air a decade ago without so much as a letter or phone call in all this time, then he shows up out of the blue for unforgettable sex but leaves in the middle of the night like he hadn’t an ounce of interest beyond a good lay. And then he shows up at my work to take me along to visit his family?
“Declan, I don’t understand,” I admitted as I slid off the bike and returned the helmet.
Something in his cocksure façade seemed to slip for a moment, but it was back so quickly, I wondered if I’d imagined the slip. “I knew if I told you my family would love to see you and that you should stop by to visit, you’d nod your head and not once make it up to the house. So, here we are.”
So, this was for his family and nothing more. The truth stung because I’d been foolish enough to think that he had other motivations, but at least there was no more wondering. Declan aside, it would be nice to see his family again.
The front door swung open while I was still at the bottom of the steps and a woman four years my senior stepped out onto the porch. I recognized her right away as Declan’s sister, Hope. Her kind eyes and long, honey-blonde hair were the same. What was different, though, was the belly that jutted out in front of her. The round bulge told me she couldn’t be more than four, maybe six weeks from her due date.
It was a shock to see, given the way Hope had been frozen in my mind as the lithe, young beauty barely out of her teen years. She was still beautiful though, perhaps even more so, and she epitomized the ‘glow’ of pregnancy like no other woman I’d seen.
“Sarah!” she called as she waddled down the steps toward us, and I immediately felt guilty for standing there idly.
“It’s good to see you again, Hope,” I told her as she wrapped me in as much of a hug as her protruding belly would allow.
“Yes, well, there’s definitely more of me to see at the moment, isn’t there?” she laughed and then looked back up at the porch, motioning up to an attractive man who had just stepped out onto the porch. “Sarah, this is John McLellan, my husband and the man responsible for the beach ball I’m carrying. John, this is an old friend—and practically family—Sarah Wells.”
I smiled up politely as Hope guided me up the steps with her arm still around my waist, leaving Declan to follow behind.
There in the doorway appeared a regal-looking woman, and
seeing her there made my heart leap into my throat. Elizabeth Ross’ hair was streaked with strands of white and the thin creases at the edges of her eyes deepened when she smiled at me, but otherwise, she was just as I remembered. Her arms felt the same, too: a cocoon of comfort and shelter when I’d had no other motherly figure to turn to in my childhood. Though I would always miss my own mother, Declan’s mom had filled in the gap to some degree for many years.
I fought back the tears as hard as I could. A Wells was strong. A Wells didn’t cry. And a Wells certainly didn’t start sobbing for no good reason on the Ross’ front porch. She released me after a long moment, and by then, I was able to collect myself enough to avoid any further embarrassment.
“What on Earth are you doing here, Sarah?” she asked, still holding onto my shoulders.
I froze. What was I supposed to say? That I’d run into her son and jumped his bones?
Fortunately, Declan stepped forward and drew her attention. “I told you I ran into Sarah the other day. I thought I’d take a chance and stop by the hospital to see if she wanted to come by and say hello. And today seemed like a good day for it since it was the last day of your practice run.”
“Practice run?” What exactly were they practicing?
“Yes, well, the past few days it’s just been our small Ross clan in preparation for the reunion this weekend. Mother thought it would be a worthwhile endeavor to give us a test run. You know, see if we could make it through a few days under the same roof without killing each other before exposing the town to the whole lot of us.”
And just like that, I was swept up into the mini family reunion. It was strange, although there wasn’t anything strange about it. But that’s what was odd; a person shouldn’t be able to slip into someone else’s family so easily. And yet, ten minutes with the Ross family, and it felt like I’d never left, like I’d been part of this family the whole time.
A half hour later, I knew what every Ross in the room had been up to for the past ten years. Well, almost everyone. All I knew about Declan’s long absence was that he’d taken up the family business, though they spoke little of it. But I supposed it wasn’t terribly unusual not to drudge up business matters during a family gathering. Still, that couldn’t have been all he’d been up to, could it?
