Into the Night (46 page)
He was a man who knew what women liked, and that was more than evident—he kissed like a pro. He kissed her with the same self-confidence that had impressed her so completely when he took command of a team of men. Long, slow, sexy, soul-deep kisses designed to light her on fire—as if she weren't already in flames.
She'd always known Muldoon was a big man, but it never quite occurred to her just how big he was—until he was on top of her like this. He almost made her feel tiny.
He stopped kissing her, pulling back to look down at her, amusement in his pretty blue eyes. "You're not talking."
"Yes, I am. I'm having a long internal dialogue chastising myself about how utterly stupid I was not to jump your bones that first day we met."
Muldoon laughed.
"Kiss me again," Joan demanded. "That's enough talking for the rest of this decade."
He kissed her, and then—God, she didn't know how he did it—somehow he got to his feet and scooped her off the sofa.
He actually picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. It was incredibly romantic—particularly since he didn't gasp or wheeze or stagger or even break a sweat.
If she hadn't already decided that she was going to sleep with him, his macho act would have clinched the deal.
And if it hadn't, the way he pulled back to look at her with such heat in his eyes after he gently placed her on the bed would have done the trick. Particularly when he said, "You don't know how many times I've dreamed about this."
She had managed to unbutton more than half of the buttons on his jacket during those nuclear kisses on the sofa, desperate to feel his skin beneath her palms. She sat up now, eager to finish the job.
He helped—so to speak—by unzipping the back of her dress and peeling her top down from her shoulders and lazily—worshipfully—kissing her neck, her throat, her collarbone.
She had his tailored jacket almost off one of his muscular arms—no easy trick—when he pulled her dress down even farther, exposing her breasts clad only in the barely there lace of her bra.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Oh, yeah," and nothing he did was lazy anymore.
He managed to shake his jacket off his arms even as he unfastened the back clasp of her bra and pulled her on top of him, so that he was on his back and her unrestrained breasts were right in his face.
She was straddling him, her dress pushed down to her waist, and she heard herself moan aloud as he touched and kissed and licked her. Or maybe that moan was because she finally pushed his shirt up and got her hands onto his smooth, bare, beautiful skin.
His belt buckle was digging into her, and he pushed her back a few inches. And then his erection was pressing up against the silk crotch of her panties instead.
She had to laugh. Yeah, this man needed Viagra about as much as he needed someone to hold his hand when he crossed the street.
"What?" He stopped his onslaught of her breasts long enough to ask, pushing her back so that he could look at her sitting up above him. "God, you're amazingly beautiful."
It was then that Joan realized all the lights in the room were blazing. It was just slightly less well lit in there than noon on the surface of the sun.
Thank the Lord that her dress covered her hips. Her hips may have been amazing, but they very definitely were not beautiful.
However, her breasts—although unfashionably large— weren't too hideous. In fact, from the way Muldoon was looking at her, she didn't feel hideous at all. Except, "My right breast is bigger than my left," she felt compelled to point out.
"That's incredibly sexy," he said. "You're the sexiest woman I've ever been with. Ever."
"Well, that's nice," she said, "but I really kind of doubt—
"Don't," he said. "Don't doubt it. I want you naked, right now. I want to see your tattoo."
He pulled her back down to kiss her, his hands busy again with the zipper at the back of her dress, checking to see if he could push it even farther down.
As far as naked went, her panties could go, along with his clothes. But Joan wanted to keep her dress right where it was, covering her thighs—and the tiny rose she'd had tattooed on her left hip in a moment of drunken madness. Of course he'd remembered that from her so-called file. Didn't it figure?
As she kissed him, she slipped her fingers inside the waistband of his pants in an attempt to distract him.
It worked, particularly when she slid her hand all the way down, inside his boxers, and wrapped her fingers around him.
He made a noise, deep in his throat, and he stopped fooling with her zipper long enough to hastily unfasten his pants. She helped, and his penis sprang free. It burst onto the scene in such a happy, joyful way that she had to laugh.
And then, because even with her somewhat limited experience she knew that laughing at the very first sight of a lover's equipment was not necessarily the most romantic thing to do, she took him into her mouth.
From the sounds he made, all was forgiven.
But damn, that belt buckle was still jabbing her. His pants had to go.
"I'll be back," she said in her best Ahnold imitation as she smiled up at him, giving him one last lick for good measure. He looked pretty damn happy and joyful about that himself.
She pulled both his pants and his boxers down his legs as he kicked off his shoes and yanked his shirt over his head.
And then, except for his socks, he was a naked, naked, naked man.
And why a man like this ever wore clothes was a mystery.
He sat up, still trying to pull off her dress, but she moved her backside out of range of his hands, taking off his socks to make the picture perfect.
And perfect, he was.
Suntanned skin, with springy golden hair on his arms and legs and chest. Muscles, muscles, and more muscles. Tousled wavy hair, hot blue eyes, square jaw, movie star worthy cheekbones, and that little smile that played about his perfect lips and lit his face with genuine and unabashed amusement and pleasure. And then, to top it all off, an Empire State Building of an erection that confirmed the desire that burned in his eyes.
Even his toes were lovely.
"Come here," he said.
"I was going to get a condom," she said. And on the way back in from the bathroom, she was going to turn off the bedroom light.
"I put some in my jacket pocket," he said, holding one of the little wrapped squares out on his palm. "Hope springs eternal and all that."
He reached for her, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back onto the bed with him, kissing her mouth, long and sweet and hard. Her bare breasts were against his naked chest.
"This is what I want," he whispered. "I want to be skin to skin with you."
"I do, too, but I want to turn off the light first," she admitted. "I'm not as perfect as you. My ass is big. And my hips—"
He laughed. "Your ass is sexy and I love every inch of your hips, baby. I've been dying to get my hands on you for days now."
"Careful," she warned. "If you call me baby, I just might have to call you Junior." She looked down between them. "Or maybe not."
He laughed, tickling her, and she shrieked, pulling away from him, leaping off the bed.
He followed, and she backed away.
"Aha," he said. He was trying to keep a straight face and failing rather miserably. "So you do want to play bad cop and naughty nun—I knew you were secretly kinky, DaCosta."
She laughed. "Naughty nun?"
Muldoon laughed, too.
Dear God, was it really possible that a man who looked like Muldoon was actually capable of not taking himself seriously, of having some completely silly fun?
Yes, apparently it was. If she were smart, she'd start figuring out some way to keep him around for longer than the next few weeks. Oh, and wasn't it a complete mistake to start thinking about that? They lived about as far apart as two people could and both still be Americans. They were both completely devoted to their careers.
And that wasn't even taking into consideration the fact that Michael Muldoon was not a long-term man. He couldn't possibly be. If she weren't careful, she was going to get emotionally pulverized. If she didn't stay in control...
But, God, look at him, smiling at her like that. His laughter had turned once more into heat as he gazed at her bare breasts and...
She realized that her dress was hanging down around her hips, and she hiked it up to cover her stomach. She didn't have the same kind of belly button action that Britney Spears had going.
"Wait," Muldoon said. "I want to show you something, okay?"
He gently pulled her across the room and turned her around. She was now facing the nearly full-length mirror that hung over the low dresser on the opposite wall from the bed. And, God, there she was, naked breasts and messy hair and all.
Muldoon moved so that he was directly behind her, his arms around her.
"Look how sexy you are," he said. He touched her breasts, her throat, her torso, his big hands sweeping across her body.
Yes, her hair was messy, but it was a sexy kind of messy. And when he touched her like that, his hands warm and his fingers slightly rough, her mouth opened slightly, and eyes half closed and...
"You're incredibly beautiful," he whispered. "If you really want the light off, we can turn it off. But I'd prefer to see this. To see you. Is that okay?"
"Yeah," she breathed. At that point, anything he asked would have been okay with her.
"Let it go," he murmured, tugging at her dress. She opened her fingers, hypnotized by both the sight and sensation of his hands moving across her skin, down the soft curve of her stomach, across her hips. Across that tiny rose tattoo. And lower.
As she watched in the mirror, he dipped one hand beneath the edge of her dress, beneath the edge of her panties and...
"Oh, yeah," he breathed into her ear, pressing himself against her rear end as he filled her with his fingers. "You make me crazy, Joan. You're so hot."
And what do you know? She actually was. Tummy and hips and all, when Muldoon touched her, when he looked at her like that, she was steaming hot.
"I love your legs," he said as he pushed her dress down her thighs, and the silky fabric pooled at her feet. He trailed his fingers along the insides of her thighs, stopping just short of touching her intimately again. She was leaning back against him slightly, breathing hard, her nipples taut and at attention. She watched herself in the mirror as she opened her legs slightly for him, in a silent invitation.
He met her eyes in the mirror and smiled—and pushed her panties down her legs. "Do it again," he whispered.
She did. Oh, my.
And then ... oh, my. She felt him against her, behind her, hot and thick, as he slid his hand down her stomach and touched her. He kept going, reaching between her legs to guide himself to her, even as he tipped her slightly forward.
Slowly, so slowly, he moved, filling her a little bit farther with each stroke, as he kept touching her.
"Condom," she remembered, even though she wasn't quite sure that she knew her own name.
"It's on." His voice sounded funny, too. "God, you're tight."
He kept moving, slowly, slowly, his fingers creating the friction that their position made impossible.
But she wanted more, and she was ready for him, reaching behind her to pull him more closely to her, to fill her completely.
"Oh, yeah," he breathed, his eyes locked on hers in the mirror. "Oh, baby. Oh, man, that's a little too nice. Hang on a sec, Joan, will you?"
She wouldn't. She didn't want to. She was about to explode, and she wanted him exploding with her.
"Don't stop," she said, moving against him. "Oh, please..."
And there, in the mirror, Joan could have watched herself fly apart. Instead she watched Muldoon as he watched her come, and the look on his face—satisfaction and desire and pure, hot, raw male admiration—was one she knew she'd remember for the rest of her life.
And when he met her gaze, he came, too. Even if she hadn't felt the tightening and sudden surge of his body, she would have known just from looking into his eyes.
Then there they were, breathing hard, eyes and body still locked together.
Muldoon smiled at her. "I hope I broke you of your irrational fear of mirrors and bright lights."
Joan laughed. "Was that what that was? A selfless humanitarian act for the good of mankind?"
He laughed, too. "No, it was entirely selfish. I happen to enjoy an occasional mirror or two." He pulled her back with him to collapse on the bed. "God, my knees. You just aren't quite tall enough." He turned his head to look at her. "For that, I mean. Not that I'm complaining." He smiled and reached over to touch her cheek.
This was where, if her life were like one of the romance novels she loved to read, he would confess that he loved her.
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