Aftershock (8 page)

“And?”

“And it seems the band has always had a great sound. Now it’s richer, more mature. I think this will be a breakout tour for you.”

“I sure hope so, but I’m done thinking about the tour tonight. And here we are at your place.”

Before she could politely thank him and make a graceful exit from the truck he was around to her side, had the door open, and a hand held out to help her down. The moment their skin made contact the sizzle hit, almost knocking her down with its strength. Intense heat surged through her body and her heart rate sped up, doing a sudden jitterbug. Rick’s hand tightened on hers and when she looked up at him, she saw he felt it, too. Regretfully she extricated her hand and dug her key out of her tiny purse.

“Thank you for the pickup and delivery service.” God, and didn’t she just sound so prim.

“You’re welcome. But this service is door-to-door. I want to make sure you get inside okay.”

“I’m fine. I promise you.”

But he stood there waiting, and it was either be incredibly rude or let him walk her up to her little porch. She slid the key into the lock, pushed the door open, and stepped into her small foyer. When she turned to thank Rick and say goodnight, he was so close she was plastered to his body. Heat blazed in his eyes and a muscle twitched in his cheek. A shared look changed into something way too intimate. Those dark eyes, the color of bitter chocolate, looked right into hers and challenged her. She should move, but her body didn’t want to obey her mind.

Then his hands clamped down on her shoulders and he lowered his head. His mouth was hot and hungry, his tongue greedy and devouring as he took her in a kiss that was more filled with passion and hunger than any she could remember. Ever. Still clinging to her purse and her key, she opened to him and trembled when his tongue swept over hers and coaxed it to dance.

“So sweet,” he murmured against her lips.

But the kiss itself was far from sweet. It was hot and spicy. His tongue delved into her mouth like a heat-seeking missile. Sydney trembled as the kiss, so intense, so heated, seduced her and invaded every one of her senses. For a long moment she forgot to breathe. It was Rick who broke the connection at last. He lifted his head but his hands still gripped her as he ran the flat of his tongue over her lips.

“This is crazy.” His voice had a gravelly sound.

She nodded. “Crazy.” She struggled to get out the one word.

“Insane.”

“Mad,” she agreed.

“I think we need to lock the door.”

He slid his hands from her shoulders and shut the door, turned the lock, and slid the dead bolt in place. Then he took the key and the purse from her and put them on the little table in the entryway before pulling her body tight against his.

Her hands shook as she slid them up along his arms to his neck and fisted them in his hair. His mouth scorched hers again, the heavy sensuality of it enhanced by raw emotion. Desire streaked through her like a tornado gone wild. Every inch of her body screamed for this man to touch her everyplace at once.

He lifted his head and locked her in place with his gaze.

“Syd, you have to know how much I want to take you to bed. I want to make love to you. Watch you come apart for me.”

“Y-you do?” God, she sounded like an imbecile, but when he touched her, all rational thought deserted her.

“The first time I saw you, I wanted you.” He gently nipped her jawline and strung kisses along the line of her neck. “Every time I’m near you, my cock gets so hard I’m afraid if I bump into something it’ll break off.”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t what?” He brushed the flat of his tongue across her bottom lip.

“The tour. The agency.” She wanted so much to be sensible. But not as much as she wanted him. Still, some shred of sanity told her to make at least a token protest.

“They aren’t here with us tonight.” He licked the shell of one ear. “Tonight it’s just Syd and Rick. No one else.” His breath whispered over her mouth. “Tomorrow we’ll worry about the agency and the tour. And everything else. Tonight this is what I want to think about. Because I want you more than I want to breathe.”

She could feel the swollen length of his thick erection pressing against her through his jeans. His chest was a hard wall of muscle against her breasts that ached for his touch and her nipples, so hard they were painful. His hands and his mouth coaxed sensation from her.

I want this
.

“O-okay.”

He cupped her chin. “Which way?”

Sydney didn’t pretend not to understand. “Upstairs. Second door.”

He swept her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing and took the stairs two at a time. She wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled her face against his neck. Whatever earthy aftershave he wore invaded her senses and ramped up her awareness of him, if that was even possible. Nudging the door open with his foot, he carried her over to the bed and set her on her feet. As if he had the layout memorized, he reached over and snapped on the bedside lamp. Then he just stood and looked at her. The heat in his eyes scorched her skin.

“There’s no going back,” he said, but in his eyes it was a question not a statement.

“No going back,” she agreed, as butterflies beat their wings in her stomach.

“Not tonight, anyway.”

She nodded and clenched her unsteady hands into fists. Hands that trembled from the unnamed emotion that tried its best to bull its way up from deep inside her.

“Not tonight,” she said in a voice so soft she could barely hear herself.

“All right, then.”

With a gentleness that belied the visible tension in his body, he unknotted the tails of the blouse at her waist and eased the fabric down her shoulders. Next came the tank. The soft material whispered against her body as he drew it over her head and tossed it to join the blouse. Although she still wore her bra, she was seized with an unexpected desire to cover herself.

“Uh uh,” he said, as if he could read her mind. “I want to see everything.”

Cupping her breasts in his large palms, he bent to take a nipple into his mouth, fabric and all. The bud tightened and puckered beneath the thin satin. Heat shot straight to her pussy, as if propelled by an arrow, and moisture flooded her bikini panties.

Rick’s hand gently kneaded her other breast. His thumb rasped over the taut point. Sydney had to grip his shoulders to hold herself steady as need and desire surged through her in a hot, erotic flood. Her body shook with the force of it. His touch was so incendiary that fire erupted low in her belly and spread to every nerve and pulse point.

He teased her breasts mercilessly, until her knees were weak and she could barely stand. Lifting his head, he brushed his mouth over hers. With the tip of his tongue, he drew tiny circles at each corner of her lips then followed the seam, a slow lick that was as arousing as any other touch. He nipped at her lips, gentle bites he soothed with his tongue before slipping it onto her mouth again. As he slicked his tongue over hers, coaxing it to an erotic dance, he reached for the button on her jeans.
Pop!
  Then the slow glide of the zipper, a soft rasp in the heated silence of the room. He eased the fabric down her hips to fall at her ankles and dropped his gaze to the triangle of pink silk covering her mound. One hand slid deliberately down her belly to cup her through the fabric of the panties. She heard him suck in a breath when he felt how wet she was.

One long, lean finger traced the length of her slit, pushing the silk in between her pussy lips and stroking her with a long, deliberate movement. Sydney dug her nails into Rick’s shoulders, trembling, not sure how long she could stand. Heat washed over her in waves, set fire to her nerve endings, and ramped up her pulse. When she tried to squeeze her thighs together to trap his hand, he just gave a low, rusty laugh and lifted his finger away.

“Like that, do you?” His tongue traced the seam of her lips again. “So do I. You’re so fucking wet already I can smell your scent. The best perfume ever.”

She moaned as he slid his hand between her thighs again and his finger stroked steadily through the wet silk. When the tip touched her clit, she cried out and rocked against him. He banded one arm around her for support as he rubbed the swollen bundle of nerves in a steady rhythm. Inside her slippery channel, the walls pulsed with need and her body clenched. The power of her release built so fast it shocked her. When he bent and took a nipple in his mouth again, she erupted. Her hips rocked against his touch, the need to feel him inside her so strong.

She clenched her thighs around his hand, trapping him in her heat, silently begging him for more. She hung on the edge, out of balance, her release so tantalizingly out of reach. His fingers pushed hard against her throbbing clit, and he sucked the tender skin at the hollow of her throat where her pulse pounded so hard. Everything inside her exploded and she came and came and came.

Sydney was so weak when the tremors finally eased she wondered if she’d simply fold into a heap on the floor. But he wasn’t done with her yet. Far from it. Easing her onto the bed, he knelt to strip her jeans and panties down her legs, pausing only to remove her sandals before discarding everything. He moved his tongue in a very lazy journey from her collarbone down between the valley of her breasts to the slight swell of her belly. He paused his journey at her navel where he spent long, tortuous moments tracing the furled flesh over and over with the hot tip of his tongue.

Pausing, he lifted his head and let his gaze travel over every inch of her body.

“God,” he breathed. “You are so fucking gorgeous.”

Sydney’s breath hitched. Gorgeous. She had a hard time seeing herself that way. She thought of her figure as full of imperfections—breasts too small, hips too wide, thighs too heavy. But the way Rick devoured her with his eyes, she felt like a sex goddess.

“I could spend all night looking at you,” he went on, “but there are other things I want to do more.”

Exerting pressure on the inside of her thighs, he pushed her legs open, lowered his head again, and followed the line of her slit with his tongue.

Ohmigod!

She nearly levitated off the bed. Just that one erotic touch, that glide of movement set every nerve in her body dancing. Every inner muscle clenching. Tightening. Using his thumbs he pressed open the lips, fully exposing her, and repeated the movement. The long, slow, wet caress shot sensations through her body. How was it possible for her to respond like this again so soon?

But Rick was relentless. He lapped and sucked and thrust his tongue inside her. Dragged it out so it rubbed her sweet spot.

When he lifted his head to look at her, his lips shone with her juices and the hunger in his eyes burned into her. He ran his tongue over his mouth with a slow movement as he licked each drop of her liquid. Sydney thought it was the most sensuous thing she’d ever seen. She could barely breathe, her breath trapped in her lungs.

“Lie back,” he murmured. “Let me do all the work here.”

She did as he asked, fisting the coverlet as if somehow she could ground herself and not explode off the bed. He applied that talented tongue to her cunt again. And oh, he knew exactly how to use it, to caress, to suck, soothe when his teeth nipped her flesh. She was shocked when a climax began to build again low in her belly. One more tiny bite of her clit and a swirl of his tongue and the spasms rocketed through her.

Rick thrust his tongue back inside her where her walls could grip it as they throbbed and convulsed and quaked. Only the tight grip of his hands on her thighs and her death clutch on the fabric beneath her kept her grounded as he spun her into a velvet vortex, a place where fireworks exploded behind her eyelids.

When she finally came back to earth, her entire body trembled and a thin sheen of perspiration covered her body. As she struggled to draw a breath, Rick stood up and leaned over her, arms braced on either side of her. His mouth curved in a satisfied smile.

“You taste so good.” He slid his tongue over her mouth, sharing her taste with her. “Better than any drink I can think of. I could get drunk on your taste, Sydney Alexander.”

“I can’t move,” she said in a breathless voice, her lips curved in an answering smile. “I may never move again.”

“Oh, yeah. You will. Give me a minute, and I’ll prove it to you.”

He lifted her so he could pull back the covers on the bed and arranged her so her head was on the pillow. Her limbs were just weak appendages of her body. He never took his eyes from her as he pulled his T-shirt over his head, toed off his shoes, and stripped away his jeans and boxer briefs. At last he stood next to her in the most glorious male nudity she’d ever seen. His lean rangy body was well-honed, his chest covered with a smattering of hair just a shade darker than that on his head. If she could have lifted her hand, Sydney would have run her fingernails through it, scraping along the hard wall of his chest. Long legs were bracketed by lean hips, but what made her mouth go dry as a desert was the long, thick cock that extended from its nest of curls, swollen and thick and ready for action.

Energy surged through her with unexpected force and she licked her lips.

She watched him pick up his jeans, dig out his wallet, and remove a condom, which he flipped onto the bedside table. His gaze devoured her, his cock hot where it brushed her thigh as he straddled her body. The look he gave her pierced straight to her heart. And just like that, arousal slammed through her.

“God, Sydney.” His voice had a raw, raspy sound, like rough wood against a wall. “You haven’t a clue how much I wanted you, right from the start. Or how I feel about you. I want everything. Your body. Your soul.” He palmed her left breast. “Your heart.”

Her heart? Oh, God! She was so afraid to misread what he said, afraid she’d get it wrong. Even though the look in his dark chocolate eyes told her he meant it.

Swallowing hard, she whispered back, “I want everything, too.”

Jesus! He wondered if she realized just how perfect she was, dark hair spread across the pillow, lips swollen from his kisses, the scent of her musk driving him nuts. He wanted to lick every inch of her, explore every crevice of her body, do things to her he couldn’t even begin to imagine. The smell of her skin and the taste of her lips were potent aphrodisiacs.