She couldn’t stand it. It was too intimate, too soon, and she gripped his hair again but then his clever tongue delved into her folds and circled her clit, and she was beyond caring. He held her thigh open with one hand and flattened the other against her belly and quickly learned what made her whimper, then moan. Pleasure tightened hard and fierce under his relentless mouth, and as the subtle, circling movements of his tongue set her on fire.
Sensation seared from her toes to the tips of her fingers, seeming to burn through her skin. She noted slats of late-afternoon sunlight lying across her belly and his hair, but closed her eyes at the image. He built the pleasure with an intensity that had her quivering in his hold, eyes closed, head thrown back, arching against him as her orgasm tore through her. When body and soul merged back together, he was braced over her, eyeing her with a heavy-lidded, predatory gaze.
“Damn,” he said.
She refused to feel embarrassed. “More. Come on. More.”
She lay limp on the bed while he yanked open the top drawer of his nightstand and grabbed a condom. He turned the package over twice before ripping it open and rolling the latex down his shaft. Without warning he shifted between her legs, and the fight or flight adrenaline was still there because her heart rate kicked into the red zone. Pinned between his body and the bed, all the vulnerability of the previous night rushed back. She gripped his taut biceps, felt her eyes widen, but he wasn’t looking at her face. His breathing shallowed as he nudged into place.
His face was tight with desire, his jaw set when his gaze met hers. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face, into the stubble. The house was barely comfortable when they were sitting still. Movement, full body contact, made sweat slick their bodies. Reduced to the most primitive state of female, she forgot where she was, her name, or any of his several names as the impulse to finish this tightened her throat, swept through her limbs. She wound her legs around his, gripped his arms, and arched into his body.
He seated himself to the hilt inside her in one smooth, gliding stroke. Something—the sheer mass of his body against hers, the visceral punch of full-body, skin-to-skin contact—tore free the last of her restraints. She went wild under him as his mouth ravaged hers, bringing the copper taste of blood to her tongue, repaying him for her pleasure with the sting of her nails. The pressure of his cock inside her ignited the crackling mixture of fear and rage and shock. She cried out, curved her arms around his torso and held on. The pace wasn’t the fast, frenetic battering she dimly expected, but rather firm, and utterly relentless. Her hips lifted to meet his, need fisting between her legs with each stroke. No escape, no relief from the emotional tidal wave cresting, driven by the pleasure building behind it, promising to obliterate everything in its path.
She couldn’t hold out against his body, the pleasure, the emotions roiling inside her. She clung to him, lifted her head, and his big hand slid into her hair. When the wave hit she sank her teeth into his shoulder, felt more than heard a muffled curse rumble in his chest, but he didn’t stop. He thrust through the spasms pulsing in her core, and this time, the waves swept her into blackness.
Awareness returned just as he dropped to his elbows, the shudders wracking his big body reverberating through hers. The tension ebbed from his muscles in slow stages, and as he relaxed against her she felt his heart pounding against his rib cage. He nuzzled into the spill of her hair, the oddest, most hesitant sigh fanning the still damp strands. When he got up to dispose of the condom she rolled onto her stomach and folded her arms, her face turned to the wall. The bed dipped as he lay down beside her, but didn’t touch her.
Silence. Pleasure ebbed to the edge of her hot, damp skin. Very aware of him lying next to her, she did a quick sweep of her psyche. Not exactly calm, but the passion seemed to have burned away most of the anger, and she was too satiated to feel fear. For now. As for the desire … that lingered, ribbons braided with the pleasure.
Flashes of the encounter came back to her. “What was so fascinating about the condom package?” she asked, the words muffled in the crook of her arm.
A moment of silence, then, in an extremely reluctant tone he said, “The expiration date.”
Even then he’d been thinking, protecting. Reaching over the side of the low bed she plucked the wrapper from the floor and peered at the date stamped into the edge, then dropped it without comment. She lifted her head to look at him. He stared at the ceiling, one hand tucked under his head, the other resting on his abdomen. A bruise the size of the toe of her boot marred the skin above his hip bone. This time he looked over at her, but while all the signs of ebbing passion were there—a dark flush fading from his cheekbones, full mouth—his gaze was unreadable. “What now?” she asked, the question purposefully vague.
Either he avoided the nuance or he opted for the most immediate answer. “Hawthorn and Sorenson are coming over at six. We need to talk about what happens next.”