There she was, at his table. Heartbreakingly beautiful and forlorn. A unicorn at the edge of the forest. He didn’t want her worried and he didn’t want her sad.
He’d walked knowingly into danger more times than he could count. He’d faced hostile gunfire. He’d even once defused a bomb. There wasn’t anything he’d back down from, anything he feared—or so he’d thought. And yet seeing Suzanne sitting in his kitchen chair, looking sad and frightened was more than he could bear.
He’d have sworn he didn’t have a heart, but there it was, clenching tightly in his chest.
Moving fast, he scooped Suzanne up in his arms and placed her on his lap. After an initial cry of surprise, Suzanne slumped in his arms, and put her head on his shoulder. They sat there in the calm quiet morning light. Just the feel of her in his arms, listening to her quiet breathing, pressing her head against his shoulder, calmed down something sore and inflamed deep down inside of him.
He ran the back of his forefinger down the sleeve of her nightgown, and then fingered it. It was an excuse to keep his hands on her. “That’s a pretty color. You look great in blue.” It was true. But then any color would look good on her.
“Thank you.” She turned her face up to him and smiled. “But it’s not blue.”
John looked at the pinch of material in his hand. It was blue. He raised his eyes to hers. She shook her head. Okay. Not blue. He looked back down. Yes, it was. Dammit, it was blue.
She covered his hand with hers. She was smiling up at him, looking for a moment like the woman he’d first met. Confident. Sexy. He loved seeing her like this. He’d give his right arm to keep that expression on her face.
“You have problems with colors, John. You need to learn the names, the nuances. For example, this nightgown isn’t blue, it’s robin’s egg. There are so many blues around—powder, peacock, navy, denim, Wedgwood…”
He was trying not to smile. “Okay, okay, I get it.”
“The world has a thousand colors.” She ran her hand over his bare chest, down his arm. “Let’s take your skin. You’re very tanned. I’d say your skin color is…” she cocked her head. “Earth. Maybe bark where you get more exposure to the sun. But here…” She traced a finger along his biceps, and then around to the paler skin beneath, “here I’d say you’re more a suede. I can see all sorts of different colors in you, from your hair, which is definitely ebony, with traces of pewter along the temples, to your eyes, which are gunmetal. Mouth.” Shifting in his arms, finger over his lips. The smile had changed and was no longer amused, it was pure temptation. That was the smile that got Adam into so much trouble with the snake. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Your mouth is…oh, I’d say cinnamon.” Her finger caressed the outlines of his lips. Her finger dipped into his mouth and he sucked the tip. His tongue swirled around it, exactly as it did to her nipple and he knew that’s what she was remembering by the way her lids lowered over her silvery gray eyes.
She had pure devil in her expression and he—there was no way to hide it any more—he was excited as hell. She looked down at his lap and—what a witch she was—licked her lips. His hard-on lengthened. It occurred to him that she was going to use sex as a way to forget her troubles.
Great. Worked for him.
There wasn’t anything that needed doing that couldn’t be put off for an hour. Or two. Or four. He could get into sex, big time.
Both her hands were in his hair now, fingers curled around his head. She ran her tongue around his lips and he obediently, eagerly opened his mouth. Her tongue rubbed against his.
“Mmm,” she whispered, angling her head, kissing him deeply.
Oh, yeah.
She pulled away just as he moved to pull her closer.
“Ah, ah,” she admonished, lips so close to his he could feel her warm breath, running her hands down his arms to pin his hands to his side, “no touching during the color lesson.” She exerted a little pressure on his wrists, as if to say—stay put.
He let her pin him down. It was ridiculous of course. There was no way she could force him to keep his hands off her, no way she could match his strength, but if this gave her a measure of control, when her life was spiraling out of control, then what the hell.
So he sat with Suzanne on his lap, his dick in its usual condition whenever this woman touched him, or was close to him, or even looked at him—iron hard.
The minx knew it, of course. How could she not know it, when she was sitting right over his hard-on? But she ignored it, as she continued playing with his mouth, petting him all over.
She ran her tongue around the rim of his ear, the tip following the whorls to the center, while her hands caressed his shoulders. It electrified him to feel her small wet tongue delicately probing. The hairs on the nape of his neck rose.
“Let’s see here,” she sighed. She found his right nipple in the chest hair and rubbed it. Damn, it was like an electric jolt shooting straight to his hard-on. She breathed in deeply, her breasts rubbing against him, as she fingered his nipple. “I’d say, here…” A pink-tipped finger rubbing around the flat areole, “here you’re brick, with copper tones, but here—“ her head dipped and she licked him, and then suckled gently, “Mm. Vermilion. Definitely.”
It wasn’t just his woodie that was hard. He was hard all over, tense and tight. Clenched like a fist. Each slow, lazy lick, each pull of her mouth on his nipple shot straight to his groin.
With a smile and a sigh, she slipped off his lap, kneeling at his feet. Reaching up to his pectorals, she ran her hands over his chest, over his abdomen. The witch bit lightly at the muscles of his abdomen.
“Bay, bronze,” she whispered and her little pink tongue ran over his chest and belly to his belly button. “Sand.” The tip of her tongue fit into his belly button and she bit him, again, not so lightly this time. Her chin rubbed against his dick.
Oh God.
A pull of the strings, and the waistband of his sweats opened. She pulled the sweats down and off and took him in hand.
“The prize,” she breathed and pulled his hard-on away from his belly. She ran her fisted hand down it, then back up. Slowly. Again. And again.
He was dying.
Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. “All sorts of colors,” she murmured. “A rainbow of them. Tea, fudge, cognac.” She cupped his balls then ran her finger up to the tip. He was wet, a second from coming.
Slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, Suzanne circled the tip, around and around. “And here…” her voice was a seductive whisper as she looked up at him, eyes flashing pure silver, “plum.”
She bent, took him in her mouth and sucked.
John exploded out of his chair, pulling her up and carrying her, with every intention of going to the bedroom. He didn’t make it.
He only got as far as the kitchen wall, where he pulled her nightgown up and plunged into her. She was wet and soft, as if she’d come. Maybe she had, while she’d been sucking his dick. It didn’t make any difference because he had no self-control at all. He didn’t even try to moderate his strokes, just pounded into her. It was so hard and fast and furious it couldn’t last long. She moaned, and then cried. When her sheath began gripping him in long liquid pulls, he slammed into her one last time and held himself deep inside her, grinding into her as he came.
They stood there, their breathing loud in the room. John hitched her legs higher around his waist, waiting for some strength to return to his legs and some blood to return to his head.
Her hair shifted on his shoulder as she turned her head into his neck, biting him lightly and sighing.
She kissed his shoulder and whispered, “You know, John, maybe you should see someone about this wall fetish you have.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“John, I want a tree.”