A Place with Briar (Harlequin Superromance) (15 page)

She might not fit the sexy bill, but he certainly did.

Damn it, if she was going to be a temptress, she had to make a better effort. After ascending the stairs to the third level, she closed the door and, safe in the confines of her bedroom with the hurricane lamp glowing at the bedside, she stripped to her skin. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she frowned at her appearance.

She hadn’t put any sunscreen on before going out under the blazing rays today. Her arms, shoulders and cheeks were tinged bright red. The rest of her looked far too pale. How could she live on the water and not have some semblance of a tan?

She put on the closest thing she had to lingerie—a pair of skimming silk underwear, and a thin nightgown. Not at all comfortable with the hem floating around her upper thighs, she pulled on her robe and tied it tight.

She heard the knock on the door and her hands fumbled. Trying to remember how to breathe, she smoothed her hands over the skirt of her robe and made her way slowly to the door.

As she closed her hand over the knob, something buzzed along her nerve endings. Excitement. A straight shot of thrill that wove its way into her blood and heightened her anticipation.

Pulling in another steadying breath, she yanked open the door.

It snaked out in an unstable rush at the sight of him. The candlelight complemented his features as well as a smile did. Her lips tingled, eager to cruise along the rough surface of his jaw.

His eyes, dark and knowing, skimmed from her made-up face over her cloaked shoulders and down to her bare calves, ankles and toes. “You almost look ready for bed.”

Not even close.
“Come in,” she said, stepping aside so he could cross the threshold before she changed her mind and shut the door in his face.

His hands slid into his pockets when she slowly turned to face him. “Liv said you needed something?”

“Er...yes.” She brushed a hand over her hair, looking around. Her eyes latched on to the kitchen sink and she gestured him that way. “It’s clogged.”

He walked to the kitchenette on the far end of the living area. Following him, she crossed her fluttering hands over her chest.

“Do you have any Drano?” he asked as he inspected the sink.

“Nope. No Drano.”
What now?
she thought frantically. Where was that little devil when she needed it?

“It seems to be draining just fine,” he deduced, running water into the sink. “Are you sure it’s clogged?”

“I guess not.” When he turned off the water and held his hand over the sink to drip-dry, she automatically reached for the dishcloth next to the stovetop. “Sorry.”

“It’s no trouble. Sinks can be tricky. Particularly when they’re old.” He turned to her. With the table at her back, she was suddenly very aware of the few inches between them. As he finished drying his hands with the checkered dishcloth, his eyes locked on hers, darkened as they took a journey over her face.

Feeling as if she were standing over a pit of fire, she swallowed. “Are you hot?”

His eyes took their time roaming her face, the line between his brows deepening. Finally, he said, “Yeah. I am.”

Knowing very well he meant something else entirely, she felt the answering boil in her blood. By God, she needed him, much more than she had originally thought. Olivia was right. She
did
need this, and she refused to think anymore. Nodding her decision, she closed the little bit of distance between them, fingers lifting to fumble with the buttons of his shirt.

She heard the quick snag of his breath. Lifting her eyes to his, she gauged his reaction. Clearly speechless, he watched her with conflicting levels of need and something else she couldn’t quite define. Determined to vanquish whatever else it was, she raised herself on tiptoe and met his mouth with hers. The clash was hot. It felt like a brand. Claiming him. She was claiming him for herself. It was about time.

Just as her hands began to skim over the hot, chiseled expanse of his chest and the taut, smooth skin that stretched over it all, she felt his fingers close around her wrists. He tugged her away, making a noise deep in the back of his throat caught between longing and frustration. “No,” he said. “No, Briar. We can’t. I can’t.”

The air shuddered out of her as his rejection hit her like a punch to the stomach. “I’m sorry. I thought... Olivia said you...” Raising her eyes to search his face again, she didn’t expect to find the pain she saw in his eyes. She raised a hand to his cheek. “Cole, what’s wrong?”

He hissed out a breath, lifting his hand to the back of hers. “This isn’t right. I shouldn’t.”

She remembered that night in the downstairs kitchen not so long ago when he had pulled away. The same look had haunted his expression. The same pain had lurked like phantoms in his eyes. She’d assumed he’d pulled away out of some maddening form of chivalry. Not now, she determined. She’d felt his searing need in his kiss. He wanted to be with her as much as she wanted him. “There’re two of us here. And, I’m sorry, but you don’t get to decide for me this time.”

“Briar—”

“No,” she said. “You’re trying to be the honorable man. I get it. And it wasn’t very long ago that that would’ve won me over. But not tonight.”

“Easy,” he said, steadying her with a hand on her waist.

“You stayed. You stayed through the storm. For me.” She watched his eyes clear and focus on hers, the doubt washing away as he looked at her, really looked at her. Something there in his deep, dark gaze answered back, acknowledged her words. His grip on her wrist loosened, no longer restraining, and his thumb smoothed over the hammering pulse point just beneath the surface of her skin.

She surged forward. “I know you care for me and you don’t want to hurt me.”

He sighed, lowering his brow to hers so the tip of his nose brushed hers. “I don’t.”

“Cole, it’s been a long time since I’ve believed in something. Really believed. But I believe in you now. I believe in us.”

“Briar...”

She kissed him, deep but soft. When she pulled back, she looked at him, hoping she’d vanquished some of that phantom pain. His lids remained closed over his eyes, but the muscles of his face were no longer taut. Lifting her mouth to his again, she took it deeper, a bit darker. “Touch me.”

He answered, shooting straight past tenderness as the restraint she sensed beneath his skin broke in two. His body pressed against her fully as his tongue finally answered the longing flick of hers. He jumped to the pace she set without question, his touch sliding across the planes of her shoulders and up the column of her throat to frame her jaw.

The ache welled up and seared her. Desperate to appease it, she arched against him, only managing to break open a whole new chain of emotions. Ravenous need squeezed so tight around her, she shook. She wanted every piece of him. Despite timidity, despite everything, she wanted the hard, driving length she felt under his jeans inside her. “Touch me,” she begged again.

A trembling sigh answered the touch of his hand on her thigh. It crept up, warm, steady, strong, lifting the hem of her gown, revealing the skin of her hip. He nipped her lower lip before trailing along her jaw to her ear. A gentle nibble of his teeth on the lobe had her melting against him, her eyes rolling back to a close.

Her breath came in fast, shallow bursts as his fingertips coursed up the outer edge of her thigh. He touched her hip, fingered the scalloped edge of her underwear, tracing the hem around the band to her belly. His knuckles caressed the fabric just above the snug, foreign fire that blazed at the cusp of her legs.

Her hands balled into fists at his back when he spread openmouthed kisses over her shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked after he’d traced his way back to her mouth. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” She sighed, leaning into him. Her lips parted in invitation.

He tipped his mouth away from hers, teasing. “Thank God.” Watching her, he delved under the fabric, fingertips traveling leisurely over skin as alive with needs as the rest of her.

As his hands wandered, she couldn’t draw a deep enough breath. The ache grew to a peak as Cole wrapped his fingers underneath the heat to daub the product of her arousal. The flush in her cheeks spread down her neck and dipped between her breasts. All the while, he watched her with deep, knowing eyes and she couldn’t breathe. His fingers turned up, parting the petals of her sex to find some sweet, explosive spot nestled underneath.

Her head fell back in shock as he manipulated her in slow, steady strokes. A gasp launched from her mouth, her hands clutching fistfuls of his shirt. Her hips bumped the doorjamb as she moved against his caress. A fine sheen of mist had popped out onto her skin.

He stopped as every muscle in her body seized, tightening as she loomed on the edge of a hot, stormy, turbulent sea. She stood limp, falling away from that dizzying precipice he’d held her over for one startling moment. His hands nudged the garment over her hips and let it fall to the floor. He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her, spinning around the jamb and into the bedroom.

Setting her on the bed’s edge, he pushed the skirt of her gown up, baring both thighs. He stepped into the vee of her legs to press his denim-clad arousal to hers. Propping her hands on the bed behind her, she arched to him. His gruff groan thrilled her. She undid the remaining buttons along the front of his shirt. Answering her thirst for skin, he rolled his shoulders and shrugged free of the fabric.

It fell to the floor and she lowered her hands, unlatching the fly of his jeans. She strained forth so she could touch her mouth to the taut, candle-licked skin of his abdomen, feel it glide underneath her lips. The sinuous wrench of arousal leading, she pressed openmouthed kisses over the heated expanse. The muscles in his jaw flared, his sinewy shoulders and rib cage rising and falling rapidly with resonant pants.

Courage leading, she let her hands roam over the strong line of his back, tracing the lines of him down to the hips and the jeans now loose around his waist. He jerked in surprise when she moved them under the denim, molding the shape of his flank. Lifting her chin, she looked into his dark eyes as she nudged the material down and away.

He toed the jeans off before taking her down to the mattress. The weight of him made her moan even as his hand trekked between them, over her. She lifted her knee, turning her leg out so he could circle the sweet spot he’d found before.

He went one step further, plunging. Touching a tender kiss to her brow, he stroked the taut walls inside her. Wrapping his free arm under her waist, he pushed her up to the spinning edge again, this time refusing to back down.

She panted as he drove her to the brink. Quivered, nails biting into his shoulder.

“Let it go,” he murmured in a rough, roused voice. “Let go. I’m right here.”

She plummeted on a gasp, a small cry following the choked sound. He held her to him, murmuring words of assurance as his head tilted, trailing over the smooth terrain of her throat. His lips came to rest briefly on the pulse before he nipped his way down to her collarbone.

Urging him on, she lay her head back and cupped the nape of his neck. His lips journeyed down to the bodice of her gown. For a moment, he stopped to indulge in the spot between her breasts, nuzzling and making the muscles of her thighs shiver and burn. Her breath quavered out as he teased her nipple through the paper-thin fabric. When the hot, damp cloak of his mouth soaked through, she let out the first moan, arching against him in a surprising burst of need.

His head lifted and she blurted, “Sorry.”

He shook his head, lowering his lips to glide over her other breast. “Do it again.”

The heat built and she bowed again, harder this time, fisting his hair. “Please,” she begged.

He stopped, reared up and pulled the gown hem up, baring her inch by colorless inch. His mouth followed, first brushing over her navel then her sternum, lingering for a moment again between her breasts. Finally, she lifted her arms and he dropped to her, skin to skin.

The heat of him seared. His kiss blazed with tension and needs yet to be fulfilled. No turning back now. She knew it. What he’d already manipulated under her skin, the charge that surged through her blood, demanded it. He knew it, she sensed as the kiss built and she began to tremble.

Arching underneath him again, she felt the iron length of him against her inner thigh. She bent her knees and wrapped her legs around his waist, watching him as she moved beneath him. He hissed, a guttural sound stirring in his chest and vibrating through her.

“Now,” she murmured, sliding her arms around him, too, so she enfolded him just as he’d already enfolded her.

His hips moved against hers. As he breached, it sent a teasing electrical pulse along her nerve endings, sparking another climax. Her body went from stiff, bracing, to relaxed and she curled into him, touching her brow to his just as he had to hers at the beginning, closing her eyes to savor as he stopped, panting.

His eyelids hovered to a half-close as if he savored the rush of being inside her. “Hold on to me,” he said. His fingers threaded through hers and he raised her arms overhead, keeping them linked and squeezing in quiet assurance. When she gripped him tight in return, he moved and they took sharp, twin pulls of air.

Her head ascended into the clouds, but her body remained grounded, churning right along with him, falling quickly into the age-old rhythm. The heat swelled between them. The outside humidity rose from their joined forms, and friction built to an unbelievable brink as he drove her up again.

Her legs gave out, sliding limp to the sheets, but he didn’t stop. Not when sweat trickled down the side of his face and over his rigid jaw. Not when she squealed as those cataclysmic sensations collided and washed around her again in a warm, bubbling pool. Not until every inch of him seized and he groaned, lowering his face to the curve of her neck as he shuddered and his erection kicked.

When he, too, was spent, they both lay unmoving. Exhausted. Sated. Briar felt comfortable despite the exposure, despite the fact that he remained firmly rooted between her thighs. She lifted a hand and raked it through his mussed black hair, lips curving slowly, warmly. The afterglow eclipsed everything that had come before it. Humming. Blissful. Perfect. He was perfect, the haunted man who was so much more than a stranger to her now.