by Erica Ridley
His strong hands caressed her trembling fingers. Deftly, he released the stubborn button, lowered the straining zipper.
She scrambled backward, abandoning his lap to prop herself up on her elbows, giving him space to rid himself of the offending barriers between them. He shucked his boots and pants and boxers, but when she reached for him, he did not let her rise.
He knelt between her legs, his hands warm against the cool gooseflesh dancing up her thighs. His head lowered. He kissed the inner curve of her knee, then the sensitive flesh along her inner thigh.
There was no doubt where these kisses were heading, no doubt at all what he intended to do once he got there, but he took his sweet time moving from lower to upper thigh, as if no portion of her skin was to be savored less than any other.
To her surprise, she wasn’t nervous. She was greedy. Her entire body tingled, not just the parts he touched. Every inch trembled in anticipation. She wanted him to hurry. She wanted him to go slow. She wanted everything, all of it, every possible permutation, because the night would not last forever and she wanted to experience it all, here, with him.
She intended to stay on her elbows, watching the play of moonlight on his hair as he spun magic with his sinful mouth. But the moment his tongue finally, finally, licked the proof of her desire straight from her core, her elbows turned boneless and her shoulders melted into the floor. She gasped his name.
Her entire body had turned to jelly, but not her insides, not the inferno of need and want swirling to a crescendo she hadn’t even believed possible. Seeing is one thing, hearing is another thing, but feeling... feeling was everything.
The pressure built and built until she was certain she would die from the delicious pain of it, the beautiful suffering, the glorious anticipation, the heady dizziness of teetering on the brink, on the cliff, on the—
She cried out as the waves broke through her. Her head lolled, her fingers twitched, her thighs tightened around his head, as his heavenly tongue coaxed more sensation from her than she’d ever known existed. Her toes clenched and unclenched, mirroring the rhythm of the orgasm wracking through her, until at last she lay limp, not capable of anything more.
He lay next to her, pulled her into his arms. She was too languid to do much more than curl into him. Distantly, she expected pressure of a different sort, a continuation of the show, of the pleasure. Instead, he simply held her close, his lips to the top of her head.
When the aftereffects of mindless ecstasy had settled into mere euphoria, she raised her head and smiled at him. She didn’t need the aid of stars to sense he was smiling back at her. Had probably been smiling for the past five minutes.
She poked him in the chest. “I’m not done with you, mister.”
“Thank God.” But he made no move to pin her beneath his long, lean body and finish what they started. What her insatiable flesh was already clamoring to continue. How much lovelier would a climax feel with him inside of her, their bodies joined as one?
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to...”
He waggled his brows. “Ravish you?”
She frowned. “Don’t you want to?”
“For the rest of my life,” he said with feeling. “But I don’t have to race to the finish line on the first night. I plan to savor our time together for as long as humanly possible.”
Well, wasn’t that sweet. Sarah pursed her lips and tried not to show how frustrating sweetness was, when what she really wanted was some good old-fashioned sexing.
He touched her cheek. “I’m not going to rush you. You haven’t gone out on a date for an entire millennium. You’re on a different clock than I am. I can respect that.”
She was definitely on a different clock than he was. Her clock was set to now. She’d lived long enough to know that no matter how long you lived, it was never as much time as you hoped. Time had a funny way of stretching on forever, and then being suddenly over when you least expected it. She planned to savor every moment with him, too. And she planned to savor it by not wasting what little they had left.
She trailed her fingertips up his chest. “So... I set the pace?”
“You set the pace.” His eyes twinkled. He held out his arms as if they were bound by chains and raised his voice with dramatic flair. “I am yours to command, O mistress of my fate, O siren of the night, O nymph of the—”
She swatted his arms. “Enough with the theatrics, Shakespeare.”
He kissed her hand.
“I am yours,” he said quietly. “It’s both as dramatic and as simple as that.”
She stared at him. He gazed back at her. He wasn’t teasing.
“I’m yours, too,” she whispered, even softer than the wind.
His grin was nothing short of cocky. “I know.”
She dipped her head to nip that cocky smile. It only made him smile wider.
She smiled right back. Mr. In-control-of-everything-and-everyone wanted her to take charge, did he? Now that was something she could work with.
He might think of her as a thousand-year-old virgin—and, strictly speaking, he’d be right—but the world had come a long way over the course of that millennium. She’d been right there watching. Sarah was no sheltered miss, unclear on the mechanics of lovemaking. He might consider himself something of a renaissance man, but she’d had a front row seat to the actual Renaissance. Including its nocturnal activities.
She walked her fingertips down his chest, down his abs, down to... yes. Exactly here.
Javier sucked in a shallow breath.
Despite her knight errant’s sincere intention of taking it slow, his cock had—luckily—missed the memo. It had been eager and rock hard from the moment they hit the tent and, if anything, had only gotten bigger. She curved her fingers around its rigid length, marveling at its heat, its strength, the way it reacted to her touch almost as if it had a mind of its own.
“Sarah—”
“Shh. I’m setting the pace.”
She lowered her head. His hips arced upward the moment he felt her mouth join her fingers. She stroked him with her hand as she tasted him on her tongue. His entire body tensed. The rain was barely falling, and the only sounds filling the tent were Javier’s rapid breathing and the wet suck of her mouth on his cock.
Without lifting her head, she rose on all fours and twisted until she could see him from the corner of her eye. His eyes were dark, his face pale, his lips dusky red. He was watching her as if she were a wet dream come to life, a miracle in the flesh.
Without lifting her lips, she met his eyes and smiled.
His hips jerked and he groaned in pleasure.
“You might want to stop setting such a good pace,” he gasped hoarsely. “I might’ve been wrong about not racing to the finish line.”
With a final lick from base to tip, she began a series of open-mouth kisses from his navel to his abs, from his abs to his chest, from his chest to his jaw.
He grabbed her with both hands and brought her mouth to his, delivering a crushing, searing kiss that thrilled her from her racing heart to her curling toes.
Loving the passion of his kisses, the taste of their tongues together, she swung one leg over his hips until she straddled his jutting cock. She rubbed against it. He didn’t let go. Instead, he deepened the kiss.
She wriggled into place, lifting her head only long enough to reach down and guide their bodies together.
This time, it was she who gasped.
She could never have anticipated the quickening—the fullness—the spiraling arousal—the rightness of being locked together with him in body as well as heart.
His hands were now at her hips, gripping, guiding, kneading. His mouth found her aching nipple and she cried out, her back arching in pleasure. She rocked her hips, her pelvis rising and falling, his mouth to her breast, her pulse racing as that glorious pressure began to build yet again, building, building, building with every thrust, every suckle.
> I love you, she wanted to say, but didn’t. Couldn’t. She was overwhelmed with feeling, with sight and smell and taste and touch, and didn’t have room in her tumbling thoughts to contemplate anything more.
He grinned up at her as if he’d heard her, anyway. As if he didn’t need words to be spoken aloud for them to pass from her heart to his.
The pressure burst and she shattered, her mouth open, her muscles clenching tighter and tighter, riding out the tidal wave of pleasure. He joined her, his breath just as shallow, his kisses just as desperate, his tongue just as hot, driving into her with his body and melding with her heart.
She slumped forward, spent, too weak to lift her face from his chest, too sated to bother untangling their limbs. His heart thundered beneath her ear, loud and strong and steady, and her eyes drifted closed.
She felt his lips in her hair, a kiss held at the top of her head. She felt the gentle puff of his breath, a breeze so slight it was almost indeterminable, and the words he whispered so softly into her hair she almost hadn’t caught them: I love you.
She smiled. She would love him forever.
Chapter 13
Javier could’ve spent the rest of the night—no, the rest of his life—lying there naked with Sarah in his arms. But they didn’t have that luxury. And besides, both of them were on the job. Tonight was noche buena, and Christmas Eve wasn’t about what Javier Rodriguez wanted. The blinding glow of his smartphone indicated they had maybe twenty minutes to get up, get dressed, and get to the tree before the school bus came chugging back over the bridge.
Nothing was better than hot sex with the woman you loved, but playing Santa was definitely a close second.
He grinned. Santa and Mrs. Claus.
“Get up, get up!” He tugged Sarah’s hand until she let him pull her to her feet.
Whereupon she promptly collapsed against him. “What’s with all the energy? I thought real men could be trusted to fall asleep afterward. My illusions are shattered.”
He kissed the bridge of her nose and knelt to rummage through his backpack. Big red pants, shiny black belt, bigger red coat. He tugged on his black hiking boots.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sarah said without bothering to hide her laughter.
Just for that, he popped the white-trimmed red hat on her head instead of his. She looked fetching. Mega fetching. Festive hat, naked body was definitely a good look for her. How much time did the phone say they had? Surely they could spare a few moments for a quick—
She pulled off the hat and snugged it down on his head. Before he could complain, her eyes did the blinky-fluttery thing and she was suddenly fully clothed.
Fully clothed as in, wearing the exact Santa’s-helper costume Zooey Deschanel had worn in Elf.
Javier smiled wolfishly. He liked. Oh yes, he liked.
She wagged her finger in warning. “None of that until later, buddy. And only if you’re a very, very good boy.”
He would be anything she wanted.
“Come on, we have to hurry.” He tugged her out of the tent and onto the trail. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still dark. “I want to be there to see their faces when they catch sight of the tree.”
They jogged hand in hand down the dirt path, a perfect mirror reversal of their race to the tent a few hours earlier.
He felt like a completely different person now. He’d tried so hard over the past two years to become New Javier, a man driven by philanthropy, not greed, whose bottom line was number of lives saved, not number of companies owned.
He hadn’t been New Javier, though. He hadn’t been any Javier at all. He’d been directionless and lost, a shadow of his old self, a man seeking a purpose, a destiny, anything at all to keep him from falling apart.
And with one misstep, with one flying clipboard and a glimpse of impossibly bright wings, his world had changed forever. He’d found life again. He’d found Sarah.
He squeezed her hand, unwilling to let go even for a second, but the wind and rain had managed to glue bits of mud and leaves to the clear plastic lining protecting the presents from the elements. The kids would be coming around the corner any minute, and he wanted them to have an unobstructed view of the gifts that awaited them.
He picked leaves off the plastic lining as quickly as he could, but there wasn’t much he could do about the streaks of dirt and mud. He motioned Sarah to go ahead.
“Go stand at the intersection. Let me know if you see them coming.”
She stood her ground, clearly as unwilling to leave him as he was to leave her. “I can see the bridge from here. It’s far, but it’s not that far.”
“We can see the bridge, but we can’t see the road leading up to it because of the curve. By the time we see the bus, they’ll already be here. If you’re close to the river, you’ll see them early enough to give me a warning shout.”
“So that you can do what, exactly? Swoop out of the sky with your miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer?”
“Nine,” he corrected her solemnly. “Don’t you recall... the most famous reindeer of all?”
She gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “That’s my cue to back away slowly before you burst into song.”
“I thought you liked my singing!” he protested as she sauntered off.
Her voice carried over the wind. “You call that noise singing?”
He burst out laughing. “You’re not a very nice angel!”
She stuck out her tongue and kept walking.
He loved that tongue. He loved her. As soon as Christmas was over, they were going to have to put their heads together and figure out a way to—
His hand flew out and braced against the tree trunk for support as the ground shook beneath his feet.
What the hell was that? Earthquake?
He jerked his gaze toward Sarah. She was maybe a hundred yards away, closer to the bridge than to him, wearing an equally baffled expression. He motioned her on.
If it was a tremor, it was over now. It had barely lasted a second. Thank heavens. That was the last thing these people needed. They’d just gotten their roofs patched, for God’s sake. He’d done his personal best at giving them rainproof roofs, but there wasn’t much he could do to make ramshackle houses earthquake-proof.
He turned back to the circle of presents and resumed picking leaves off the plastic lining. His boots sank deeper and deeper into the mud, as if the weeks of rain had turned the rainforest into quicksand.
As if on cue, a crack of thunder rent the sky and the first cold wet drops splattered on his face.
Great.
“They’re coming!” Sarah shouted from her vantage point along the river’s edge. Despite the hard time she’d given him earlier, her eyes were shining and she bounced on her feet in obvious excitement. She might burst into song even before he did.
“Roger that!” he called back, lifting up his foot to edge around to the other side of the tree.
Tried to, anyway.
He frowned down at his feet. The toes of his boots weren’t even visible anymore. It looked like his feet started at the ankle. With superhuman effort, he managed to pull his right boot up out of the sucking dirt, then the left boot. If he’d been wearing tennis shoes, he’d have lost them completely.
Another rumble shivered beneath the soil. He shot a quick glance over at Sarah, to make sure she was safe.
She was fine. Hadn’t even noticed. Was too busy gazing down the river and clapping her hands in glee.
A shadow fell on the wet earth stretching between them.
He glanced up at the sky. Filtered moon, hidden behind the clouds. Trees, vines, nothing that could cause such an enormous, perfectly round shadow. The rain began to fall harder.
He squinted, trying to make sense of what he saw. The shadow was growing larger. Darker. And faster. He realized what it was the same instant the earth fell away.
Sinkhole.
“Sarah!” he screamed, but there was nothing to do, no way to warn her. It had alr
eady happened.
Ninety of the hundred yards between them disappeared into a perfectly round chasm. He couldn’t see the bottom, didn’t want to step away from the safety of the tree to even try.
His boots were covered again. Up to his ankles. Higher this time.
Sarah whipped toward him, eyes wide as harvest moons, just as the bus rounded the corner. She couldn’t see it because she was facing him, and the driver couldn’t see anything at all because of the dark and the mud and the rain, but Javier had a horror-perfect view of the imminent disaster. The sinkhole was too close to the steep drop-off to the river. The weakening ground would cause a landslide at any moment.
Already, this side of the bridge was sliding, sliding, sliding.
And the bus had just lumbered onto the other side of the bridge.
Sarah started sprinting in his direction, unaware of the nightmare unfolding behind her. Javier made slashing gestures with both arms, signaling her not to come this way, but she was heedless of his warning—or the danger to the children.
“Kids!” he screamed, pointing emphatically behind her. “Go get the kids! I’m fine!”
She paused to glance over her shoulder and stopped in her tracks. The bus was getting closer. Closer to its doom. She turned back to him. “You swear you’re safe?”
“I’m great, I swear!” He wasn’t great. He could already feel the ground shifting beneath his feet. But he was the one who bought the bus, who sent the kids across the river for Christmas mass, knowing they would be making the return trip after dark. She had to save them. No matter what.
Sarah hesitated, clearly torn. She didn’t want to let him out of her sight—Lord knew, she had good instincts—but the bridge wasn’t going to hold for much longer. Not with the ground beneath it sliding into the river below.
“I don’t know what to do.” Her voice shook. It was the first time he’d ever heard her say I don’t know. Maybe the first time she’d ever felt indecision. Her life had always been black and white, good and evil, rules and commandments. She glanced behind, saw the bus had already come too far to turn around, the bridge too imbalanced to hold for more than a few more seconds. The kids already screaming, terrified. Fear laced through him. “Javier, I—”
