Explosive (27 page)

Even in the midst of his crisis, Thomas had ended up showing more restraint than her. It pained her a little, to recall how he’d leashed himself there at the end, how she’d heard both pain and intense pleasure in his climactic groans. She sensed that he sought her out to somehow ease the impact of his trauma . . . to escape it. Recently, she’d experienced a simultaneous desire to do precisely that.

They’d become partners in that unspoken goal.

But Sophie knew his crisis would come to an end. Whatever he’d pushed out of his memory, it would eventually return. Andy was right. The unit that Thomas had belonged to in the Navy required an enormous psychological tolerance for stress. Whatever had happened to Thomas in the past several days—what short period of time was hiding in the darkness of his consciousness—would eventually return, and likely very soon. Localized amnesias from acute traumas typically didn’t last long.

It was one thing to be able to withstand the stress of war and imminent death. But Sophie knew personal loss, family grief—and betrayal?—was a different matter entirely.

Sophie couldn’t precisely see what had caused Thomas’s anguish, but she could see the murky outlines of it through the lens of how he was reacting. He had withstood fifteen years of stressful duty in the military, and not only endured it, but excelled, becoming a high-ranking officer and commanding his own unit. He’d survived three tours of duty in the Middle East. But despite all those years of constant, almost daily stress, events that had transpired in the past few days that related to his family had turned him into a bundle of tightly wound nerves and precipitated an anxiety response in him that he’d never begun to manifest as the leader of a bomb squad.

Sophie didn’t
need
to know the precise details of what had happened. To see Thomas’s response was sufficient for her to know whatever he’d seen in the past week, whatever he’d experienced . . . whatever he’d learned, had slashed and torn at his very soul.

It might have just been the unexpected deaths of Rick and Abel that had caused his traumatic reaction. But knowing what she knew through Andy’s consultations about the Carlisle family and her cryptic, yet telling conversation with Agent Fisk, Sophie doubted it.

I feel like the ground has dropped out from under me.

Her face tightened with emotion when she recalled Thomas’s anguish after as they’d stood in the kitchen yesterday. In a psychological sense, he’d spoken a literal truth. Thomas Nicasio’s entire world, his foundation, had crumbled and disintegrated beneath his feet.

She walked over to the window that looked out onto the lake. It seemed smooth and gray today, like an opaque mirror. She saw a fishing boat puttering into a cove at the far side of the lake, recognizing Thomas and Sherm by the dark red color of the craft and Sherm’s bright orange fishing cap. Her gaze lingered on the other figure sitting at the back of the boat before it disappeared behind the trees that lined the cove.

He was safe, for the moment. She exhaled slowly, not realizing until that very moment she’d been anxious about his safety while he was absent.

She didn’t know what she should do. All wisdom had abandoned her. It must have, to be falling for a man who could probably never return her feelings, given what he was experiencing.

She could only take each hour as it came.

She sighed and turned away from the window. They needed groceries and other supplies. She’d feed Guy the hamburger that still remained and try to check on his paw. Then she’d drive into Effingham and do a little shopping while Thomas was out fishing with Sherm.

It seemed like as good a plan as any, under these precarious circumstances.

And then later, when Thomas came home . . . she’d seduce him. Sophie felt a little guilty about being so premeditative. But the fact of the matter was, Thomas’s strong desire for her was being fueled by his grief and trauma. Sophie had understood that from the beginning. The knowledge hurt, but Sophie didn’t hold it against Thomas.

How could she?

After last night, she also knew one other crucial bit of information. He wasn’t just using their sexual attraction to keep the memories at bay. Part of Thomas
wanted
to remember what had happened that first night when they’d made love, even if another part of him grasped for the darkness of forgetfulness. And whether she liked it or not, the electrical attraction he felt toward her had somehow become twined with his localized amnesia.

Previously, she’d conceptualized his hypersexuality as a means of escape from his trauma. Now, she’d grown to suspect that he was grasping for something as well when he made love to her so ravenously. He tried desperately to recall, even as another voice in him demanded he forget.

She needed to reach him. And if she could do that by drawing him closer to her using the only language his anguished body and mind would allow at the moment—volatile sex—then Sophie could accept that challenge.

It was a dangerous dance she was engaging in with Thomas. They moved right on the precipice of disaster. The realization that she was falling in love made her gambit even riskier.

She could only hope the situation didn’t explode in her face at the smallest misstep.

An hour and a half later she went into her bathroom and closed and locked the door. She set the sack she’d just brought in from the car and the bottle of lubricant they’d used last night on the counter and glanced at herself in the mirror. The faint hint of a blush still lingered on her cheeks. Thank goodness Thomas hadn’t arrived back at the cottage yet, or he might have noticed it.

It hadn’t been anywhere near as mortifying and anxiety-provoking as she’d thought it would be to enter the adult sex store that wasn’t far off the interstate near Effingham. She’d imagined sex-starved truckers, indecent proposals, and possibly illegal prostitution rings awaited inside the small shop. Instead, she’d found an empty parking lot and a bored middle-aged woman manning the cash register.

Thankfully, reality had paled compared to her fantasies.

The sex-shop sales clerk had asked Sophie if she needed any help finding anything, but her weary tone and the way she barely pulled her eyes away from the television perched behind the counter made it easy for Sophie to say
no
. She’d proceeded to walk up and down the aisles, her curiosity slowly starting to overshadow her worries about being harassed by sex-crazed truck drivers.

She withdrew the item she’d bought at the store and opened the box. Inside was a butt plug. Sophie had hesitated about which size to buy. It would be easier to insert one of the smaller ones, but wouldn’t that make things more difficult in the end? She’d finally purchased a medium-sized one, thinking it would be better to get over any discomfort alone instead of having it interfere when she made love to Thomas.

She withdrew the black silicone plug and ran her fingertip over the fat head that would keep it in place once it was inserted. It looked like it might hurt considerably, so it surprised her that a flash of heat went through her pussy. She’d been too determined about her mission to seduce Thomas—to draw him closer, to break down some of his defenses—not to mention too embarrassed by her foray inside the adult store, to be aroused before.

But now, here in the privacy of her bathroom, excitement intertwined with her anxiety.

She wasn’t sure precisely how to proceed in her little experiment, but the physician in her told her that the most important thing would be to relax. She stripped out of her floral print skirt, T-shirt, bra, sandals, and underwear and turned on the shower. After her flesh had grown warm from the jets of water, she picked up the soap and lathered her hands, the motions calling to mind vividly the image of Thomas swirling the soap in his large, masculine hands last night.

Without ever intending to do so, Sophie began to trace the trail on her flesh that Thomas had made in this same bathroom hours ago. She closed her eyes while her hands slicked over her belly and hips, then cradled the weight of her breasts. She thought of Thomas’s gruff yet gentle command,
Offer them to me, Sophie.

Her fingers rubbed and pinched at her nipples as she stood in the shower and imagined doing just that: offering her flesh to Thomas, making his eyes go dark with need . . . giving herself freely for his consumption. Her pelvis arched up against the pressure of the jetting water, eager for the stimulation on her cunt.

A moment later she turned her hips out of the water spray. Her hand moved in her soap-lathered pussy, stroking her burning clit. She used her other hand to penetrate her rectum, using the soap to ease her passage. Her fingers circled more frantically on her clit as her excitement mounted. She moaned; her eyes opened dazedly at the sound. She’d been so engrossed in her memories and fantasies, she hadn’t even been aware of making a choice to masturbate.

She rinsed quickly and opened the shower curtain. The steam in the small room had grown so thick she didn’t even catch a chill when she stepped out of the tub. She dried off and stood before the sink, naked.

She carefully washed the butt plug and coated it liberally with lubricant.

Her face looked wary in the mirror when she bent slightly over the sink and parted her bottom cheeks. She winced when she experimentally tried to slip the thick head into her rectum.

It wasn’t going to work, she thought in rising frustration. Thomas had been right to doubt the possibility of the maneuver.

But she had taken his cock head into her ass last night; surely she could manage this.

She pressed her ass determinedly against the silicone plug. Pain shot through her body. She removed the plug from between her ass cheeks, but she didn’t give up.

She applied the lubricant to herself and finger-fucked her ass for several seconds. Slowly, heat began to spread in her sex until she found it necessary to slip a finger between her labia and stimulate herself.

She had been a virgin to anal play until last night, and had been surprised by how much it had aroused her. Thomas may have thought she was being kind by asking him to put his cock in her, but she hadn’t been. As she’d lain there restrained to the bed with her ass in the air, all she’d been able to think about was Thomas’s beautiful cock, of him filling her in such a private place . . . of him taking so much pleasure in what she offered him freely.

It’d pained her, a little, when he’d refused her.

But if she could ready herself for him, maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to restrain . . .

This time when she picked up the plug, she reached between her legs instead of around her hips. Thanks to the new angle and her increasing arousal, she was able to work the slippery plug into her body with only minimal discomfort.

When the silicone plug was lodged snugly in her ass, Sophie placed her hands on the vanity and panted, examining her reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks and lips were stained dark pink and her eyes were shiny with arousal. Her nipples stood at full-alert status.

She looked every inch a sex-primed woman: flushed, warm, and wet. For a few seconds, she just stared, so unaccustomed was she to seeing her sexuality fully exposed.

Thomas had given her this gift, she realized with dawning amazement. He’d introduced her to the creature who had always resided behind her conservative blouses and low-heeled pumps.

He’d taught her to like this earthy, sexy woman.

Her soft, soughing breath was the only sound in the silent room. She felt full and incendiary, but the inserted plug also created a pressure on her sex, making her pussy tingle with excitement.

What if Thomas didn’t come home for hours? What if Sherm and Daisy asked him to stay for lunch?

Sophie’s worries about having to wear the plug around for an undetermined period of time were shattered instantly when she heard the back door open.

“Sophie?” she heard Thomas call down the hallway.

Sophie froze, still bent over the sink. Her ass clenched around the invading plug and arousal stabbed at her clit.

“I . . . I’m in the bathroom, Thomas. I’ll be out in a minute.”

She leaned up and washed her hands, using cold water to try to dampen the heat that plagued her body. She applied some scented lotion and deodorant before she redressed carefully.

She hesitated before she opened the bathroom door.

It was useless; she couldn’t prevail. She wasn’t as strong as Thomas. She reached for the bottom of her skirt and lifted it.

She bit her lip to prevent a cry when she made herself come with her hand a few moments later, the plug in her ass and her desperate plan to seduce Thomas adding a hot spike of excitement to her orgasm.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

Thomas knelt on the carpet in Sophie’s living room, flipping through the old record albums stored in a crate. Sophie’s parents might have been too self-involved to cherish their only daughter, but he had to admit, they had excellent taste in music. He smiled and withdrew one album. He’d just figured out how to operate the record player when he saw Sophie walk into the room from the corner of his eye. The vision of her snagged his gaze and held as firmly as one of Sherm’s handmade lures in a fish’s mouth.

“Wow,” he said.

The becoming color in her cheeks deepened.

“Wow . . . what?” she asked, just as the opening notes of Elvis singing “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” resounded from the speakers.

“You’re not wearing a bra.” He glanced up from the riveting site of Sophie’s full breasts pressing against the thin fabric of a light pink T-shirt. He realized he’d sounded stupid, but in fact, he was just dumbfounded by her beauty. “You
never
go around braless.”

He experienced a moment of regret at his bluntness when she glanced away in embarrassment. “I . . . I hurried out of the shower when I heard you.”

“I’m not complaining. Trust me, I’m not complaining. Hey . . . look at this,” he said, holding up the record album in his hand in an attempt to ease her bout of self-consciousness. That such a gorgeous woman would ever feel uneasy about her body was shocking to him, but he’d come to accept that in Sophie’s case, it was a plain fact. She’d been born with the genes of a Hollywood film goddess, but no one was more interested in denying that obvious truth than Sophie herself.