Chapter Thirteen
Morning had always been Megan’s favorite time of day. When she used to go into an office, rather than working from home, she had been the annoyingly cheerful person on Monday morning. But waking up in bed with a warm male body wrapped around her was a whole different kind of good morning.
Last night when she’d given in to her desire, she’d known that they could only have one wild night. But even though the first rays of light were starting to peek in under the curtains, it was still dark enough in the room that she could let herself pretend they were still in the midst of their forbidden night together. So when Gabe stirred against her, his erection hot and hard against her bottom, she refused to let herself come fully awake.
Megan had never been a vixen, had never been the kind of woman who would wake a man up in the middle of the night to have him one more time...but nothing that had happened with Gabe so far had fallen under the “normal” category. And until the day really and truly began, weren’t all rules still off?
Including the ones that said she shouldn’t slowly turn in his arms and press a kiss to his chin?
Her heart was beating hard enough that she was certain if he were awake, he would feel it beating through from her skin to his.
When Gabe didn’t stir at her soft kiss, she wondered if she’d imagined him pulling her closer into his hips a few seconds earlier. Had he just been moving in his sleep? And, if so, was she bold enough to make the first move like this? To take what she wanted, what she needed, one more time before shutting down those desires forever?
She pressed her mouth a little lower, just below his chin, against the dark bristle of stubble right where his pulse throbbed against his skin. She tasted that pulse with the tip of her tongue, then had to follow that up with several more little licks at his collarbone and then over the shoulder that was raised up off the bed where his arm was curving over her.
Each soft kiss, each stroke of her tongue against his warmth, made her bolder.
Last night there’d been too many sensations to hold on to. The sheer shock of being intimate with Gabe had been more than enough for her to deal with and she hadn’t been able to explore him nearly enough. Now, she took that chance, and as she slid her hand up to press the muscles of his chest, she shifted away just enough to see how small her splayed fingers looked across his broad chest.
She’d often heard woman giggle about firefighters, dreaming about what they wanted to do with them. But Megan had gotten married so young she hadn’t ever really had time to build up those kinds of fantasies. And then after David had died, she hadn’t let herself think about firefighters or cops or SEALs like that.
Oh, but if she had, she thought with a small smile of pleasure that she didn’t bother to contain while Gabe still slept, she would have been dreaming of a man just like this. Big and beautiful and utterly committed to wringing every ounce of pleasure from her.
Pleasure that was only growing with every moment she stole in his arms as her hands roved gently lower.
Megan was so lost to the glory of her explorations of Gabe’s body that she was caught utterly unaware as he suddenly shifted and rolled her onto her back. She lost her breath as he came over her, one of his strong thighs between hers, his eyes clear and perfectly awake as he stared down at her.
“You were awake the whole time,” she accused when she could get her voice back.
“I am now,” he said, and then his mouth was over her breasts and he was using his big hands to push them together so he could lave both nipples at once.
She could feel his erection hard and throbbing against her thigh, knew he had to feel how wet, how ready, she was. She’d never woken up like this, ravished before breakfast by a man who stole away not only her breath, but every rational thought she’d ever had, completely. All that remained between them was the slow move of skin against skin, the caress of each other’s hands against sensitive flesh, the press of their mouths against whatever they could reach, whatever they could taste.
Megan wanted this final lovemaking to go on forever. She wanted to make sure that she could remember every touch, every moan of desire, every gasp of pleasure for later, when she was alone again. But everything they’d done in the dark, the slow seduction, the naughty risk of doing what he’d asked her to do, only fueled her need for more. As if they were of like mind, in unison, they shifted so that both of her thighs were around his. But then, just when she thought he was going to take her, brand her as his, he was moving them both so that he was on the bottom.
Moments later, she was sitting up on top of him, high enough out of the covers that she could see the sunlight streaming in earnest, the night before nothing but a distant memory.
She shut her eyes tight, not wanting the real world to intrude on her fantasy come to life. Just a few more minutes. That’s all she was asking for.
Fortunately, she didn’t need her eyes to be open to shift into place over Gabe’s erection, which was the only possible thing she could wrap her brain around at present.
She was almost there, could almost feel his heat coming into her so perfectly, when she heard, “Megan.”
Very reluctantly, she opened her eyes and looked down at him.
His blue eyes were intense, full of arousal, and something else she couldn’t quite figure out. Or maybe it was that she didn’t want to figure it out.
Not when she was still trying to pretend.
“Are you protected?”
Her brain couldn’t quite process his question at first, it had been so long since she’d thought about things like protection against sexually transmitted diseases.
Or pregnancy.
When the words finally pierced the haze of lust fogging up her brain, she would have shot up off his lap, but his hands were firm around her waist, keeping her right where she was.
“No.” The one word sounded overly loud in the hotel room.
What was she doing?
But before she could answer that question, Gabe was reaching over to the side table and picking up a condom she hadn’t seen him put there the night before.
She knew, now, that she should stop him from putting it on. That last night was an aberration they definitely shouldn’t repeat.
Of course, she also knew that if he opened up that condom wrapper and slid it over his erection, she wouldn’t have a prayer of stopping herself from continuing what they’d started. What she’d started.
Because she’d been unable to help herself.
And yet, the tearing of the wrapper never came. Because Gabe was holding it out for her. As if he wanted her to make the choice about making love again.
Her words from the night before came back at her, then.
Please love me.
Megan closed her eyes at her weakness, at the way she’d begged Gabe for something so much bigger than just physical pleasure. That was how dangerous being with him was. It was long past time to steel herself to do what she’d told herself she would do come morning, and get out of the bed. But her heart, her guts, felt like they were being torn in two as she tried to climb off his lap.
The hotel was almost perfectly silent in the early morning, but she swore she could hear the clinking of the prison bars, one after the other, settling into place around her heart, first, and then her body.
Boom!
Megan knew she was being crazy, that she had to be overtired from too much exercise—and sex!—and not enough sleep.
Boom!
Her heart was already trapped, but as another thick bar came down—Boom!—instead of letting them continue to fall around her, she took crazy to a whole other place...and lunged back at Gabe.
She grabbed the condom from his hand and ripped it open so fast the latex circle fell into the bed as she held the two pieces of wrapper in each of her hands.
Boom!
She dived for the condom and scrambled back up over him, her hands shaking as she lifted the condom over his shaft. But just when she thought nothing could break her panic, his hands covered hers.
Warm. He was so warm.
She lifted her eyes to his and realized she was panting.
“Megan?”
She suddenly saw herself through his eyes, the way one night of incredible sex had turned her completely inside out. He should have been running away from her as fast as he could.
But, for some reason she couldn’t understand, he wasn’t doing that.
And somehow, when she was looking into his eyes and she could feel him warm and solid beneath her, those bars stopped slamming down around her. As if he could read her mind and knew exactly what she wanted, but was unable to ask for, he slid his hands all the way up her arms, past her shoulders, to cup her face in his palms.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
She leaned down over him, then, and as their mouths met so gently she felt something shatter inside her chest. Those bars around her heart were all knocking into each other as she gave in one last time to something so sweet she couldn’t stop herself from going back for more, couldn’t keep her hips from sliding up, then up some more until she was levered over him, her hips directly over his.
Megan took Gabe inside her on a gasp of pure joy. And there was no denying that making love with him again felt incredible, no way to stop her arms from going around his neck to pull him closer, or her legs from wrapping around his hips as they rolled back over so that his wonderfully heavy weight was pushing her back into the bed.
But even as her body hurtled toward an inevitable climax, even as she lifted her hips up to be closer to his, even as his mouth came down over the tip of one breast and she arched into the heat of his tongue—and especially as she tried to keep what was happening in a “just hot sex” box—there was no way on earth that Megan could deny that being with him this morning was different.
Bigger.
And so much scarier.
Too scary to go there alone.
“Please,” she gasped out.
Gabe lifted his eyes to hers, sweat dripping from his forehead to hers as he stilled. “Anything,” he told her, his voice as raw as hers.
But he couldn’t give her anything. He couldn’t become a man who went to a safe office every day and promised to come home in one intact piece every night.
And she could never ask him for that.
All she could ask for was this moment, this pleasure.
“Gabe.” She lifted one hand to his cheek, cradled him there as her whole world came down to this man, this one moment, this desire that demanded to be sated. They wouldn’t get any more moments like this. All they had was now, these final moments of sweet perfection. “I need you here with me.”
“I need to be there, too.”
His words were as good as a caress, enough to push her to the precipice of a pleasure so intense she couldn’t even imagine what was on the other side.
For the first—and last—time, Megan opened herself up completely to Gabe, pushed down every wall, shoved apart every prison bar, and let him in, so deep that as he slowly slid into her, as he filled all of the empty places she hadn’t even realized were there, she could have sworn he touched her soul.
Again and again he rocked over her, around her, inside her, his arms strong, his heartbeat steady, his kisses sweet and demanding all at the same time as they climaxed together.
No one has ever loved me like this was her last thought before the prison bars started falling back into place, crashing down in a circle all around her heart.