He was out the door, in the quiet hallway, before he registered intention, let alone movement. Disdaining the elevator, he took the stairs two floors up and crossed the hall to her room. He and Nate by unspoken agreement took the rooms with the parking lot views so Darla Collins and Alana would wake up to the sound of waves lapping against the beach.
Remember that nice guy when you feel like a raging caveman.
Silence reigned behind her door. He rapped quietly, using only the knuckle of his index finger, not all four fingers like he did when he meant business. If she was asleep, she’d sleep through the knock. After a few moments he heard the gentle swish of fabric against skin, then a hesitation he hoped was her looking through the peephole, not deciding whether or not to let him in.
The safety chain rattled, then the dead bolt clicked open, followed by the door opening. She wore a thin cotton nightgown that hung low on her breasts and skimmed the tops of her thighs. Her pale blond hair held the faint dampness of a shower. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but the moonlight caught the blue of her irises and her pink lips nonetheless.
He looked at her, letting anger and confusion and desire infuse his face, giving her fair warning to shut the door. Instead she stepped back, wordlessly inviting him in.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m a nice guy,” he said. “I’m not.”
She didn’t move, didn’t close the door or answer him with anything other than the slight tilt of her head that sent her hair gliding against her cheekbone.
He stepped through the door, took the handle from her, and closed it. When the latch snicked into the lock she reached out and fisted her hand in his shirt, pulling him in for a kiss.
He pinned her to the wall with mouth and chest and hips, and cupped the clean line of her jaw with both hands as he ravaged her mouth. She made a whimpering little noise but rather than squirming to get away she tried to climb him, looping one leg around his and keeping him close. He slid one arm under her hips and lifted her; when she locked her ankles around his waist he stepped away from the wall, crossed through the sitting area and bore her onto the bed.
She gasped when he scored her throat with nipping, hot kisses. “Lucas!”
“All day I’ve watched other men try to get into your pants,” he growled, hardly conscious of what he was saying.
“Garrett’s already been up here,” she gasped.
That explained the careful use of the peephole. He shoved her thin nightgown up to her waist, then bent his head and nuzzled it the rest of the way up past her breasts. He closed one hand over her breast and brushed the nipple with his thumb.
Each rhythmic stroke of his thumb tightened her body ever so slightly. Her eyelids drooped. “Were you wearing that when you opened the door?”
“I didn’t open the door,” she whispered.
He shut her up in the manner used by lust-crazed men everywhere, with a deep kiss. In the part of his brain still capable of observing, he knew he was being rougher, more passionate than he’d been before. He worked his thigh between hers, pressed against the cotton covering her mound. That wasn’t enough, so he rolled half on top of her and he used his greater weight to keep her pinned as he kissed her.
Her fingers laced through his hair, holding his mouth to hers as the kiss turned edgy, lips and teeth and tongue demanding what he hadn’t put into words. Completing the movement, he shifted between her legs, raked the edge of his teeth down her throat, and took advantage of the way she bucked to tongue each nipple. When he’d kissed his way down her sternum, her hands shifted to his shoulders, pushing him lower.
He settled between her thighs. She was slick and hot, the lap of waves on the beach an erratic counterpoint to the steady swipe of his tongue. Her hip bones held the sun’s heat, the ocean’s salt filling his senses as he ruthlessly worked her to the edge, then flung her over.
“Mine,” he murmured into her hip bone. Then he sat back, worked his shorts low on his hips, pulled a condom from his pocket and rolled it on, then sank inside her.
He expected to finish fast and furious, but the sound she made, the way she tightened around him, inside and out, sounded extremely promising. So he gritted his teeth and held back, keeping his pace slow and steady and relentless. His reward was her heels in the backs of his thighs and her hands flattening against the small of his back. She gave a devastating little shimmy as she adjusted their alignment to just right. He braced one elbow above her shoulder to hold her in place and clamped his hand on her hip, just to be sure she wasn’t going anywhere.
“Oh, God,” she sobbed.
Her release happened all at once, shuddering out in her breathless sobs, her fingernails digging into the base of his spine, but it was the rhythmic pulsing around his cock that did him in. He buried himself deep inside her, his vision closing to blackness as he came.
Time passed in a heaving, heart-pounding blur before he registered her palms patting his shoulder blades. “Hey,” she said. “Are you still in there?”
He cleared his throat, then braced his weight on his elbows. “Yeah. Are you all right?”
“That didn’t actually hurt,” she said.