Lucky in Love (13 page)

Chance
's eyes locked on my lips, though, and he gave me a devilish smile. "Let me help."

He cupped his hands around my elbows, lifting slowly until I was standing in front of him. Damp heat radiated from his skin, leftover from his hot shower, and up close, I could see a few drops of water still beaded on his chest. With one gentle hand, Chance lifted my chin, met my eyes for a charged moment,
then bent his head to trace the outline of my lips lightly, teasingly, with his tongue. My thinking processes had gone fuzzy as soon as he'd stepped out of the bathroom, but one thought crystallized.
I want this man now.
 

His other hand slid around to the back of my neck, and he tangled his fingers in the hair at the base of my neck. He tugged firmly, startling a gasp out of me, and I dropped my head back so he could continue his soft assault on my neck. He trailed nips and soft kisses down the side of my throat.

"Do you want this?" he asked softly, stopping what he was doing to look back up at me. His breathing was harsh and I wanted nothing more than to rip the towel away from his hips, loop it around his neck and yank him down on top of me. "I realize you thought it was an end of the world scenario back in that plane. Since it wasn't, just say the word, and we'll stop this right here."

I didn
't think, just voiced the thought that had been stuck in my head since we'd passed that iconic Welcome to Las Vegas sign: "We might not have been about to die in that Cessna, but I can't shake the feeling that the hammer's going to drop tomorrow. It's like all the bad luck in my life has been leading up to this."

His look turned fierce.
"I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

"
You can't control the world, Chance," I said, lifting a hand to run my fingers down his clenched jaw, feeling the tension ease a little under my caress. "What happens, happens. But I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be right now than here with you." I laughed a little brokenly. "You asshole, I've been dreaming about you for the last ten years."

He lifted both hands to frame my face while
remorse washed over his. "If I'd have stayed, I would have made you miserable, just like my dad did to my mom. I loved you, too, Lucky. So much that it scared the crap out of me. But I've got shitty DNA. I can't fight that."

As a kid, I had never met his dad, just heard rumors at school, and seen the disgusted look on my mom's face whenever h
is name was mentioned. From what I could tell, he was a lazy, abusive drunk who wasn't above knocking his family around when the mood struck him.

"
You're not your dad, Chance."

"
You can't say that. You didn't know him, live with him. Watch him beating your mom when he wasn't in jail for another DUI. I almost killed him once, you know."

"
If you expect me to be shocked, I'm not. You protect people. It's what you do."

He laughed bitterly, and dropping his hands, stepped away from me. The air conditioning suddenly felt
frigid and I rubbed my arms where goosebumps had formed.

"
You can't be that different than the boy you were, Chance," I said softly, but he turned away from me. Another scar stood out white against his back, this one a round, smooth one, a few inches to the right of his spine.

I stepped forward and touched it lightly. It couldn
't have been from anything but a bullet wound. He stiffened.

"
Lucky, I've done a lot of things since you saw me last that I'm not proud of."

"
I'm not trying to poke into your past," I said wryly, trying to inject some lightness back into our situation, "And I already told you I was looking to get laid. What's your holdup?"

"
Is that what you want?" he asked again, this time in a snarl, turning around and grabbing my arms. His grip was tight, but not painful, and there was a hard glitter in his eyes. 

"
I think I already told you it was," I replied, my breath catching in the back of my throat at his quickness. "I'm not scared of you. I know you." I said completely truthfully.

He didn
't move, though, obviously still caught up with those personal demons. So I did what I'd been wanting to do since he stepped out of the bathroom. Gave that towel a quick yank so it fell to the floor. He automatically let go of my arms to grab for it, and I stripped my tank top off in one quick move.

I hadn
't bothered with a bra after my shower, and my breasts hung free. They were bigger than they had been when I was a senior in high school, thanks to me being a little bit of a late bloomer, but thankfully, they were still pretty perky. As soon as the cool air hit them, my nipples pebbled and Chance froze, drinking in the view.

Certain that I now had his
attention, I hooked my thumbs in the waistband of the yoga pants and tugged them down so that they slipped to the floor, leaving me only in a lacy pair of black boycut briefs. He swallowed hard as I stepped out of the pooled bottoms at my feet and stepped backward toward the bed behind me.

"
Chance," I said firmly. "I trust you. I want you. I know you, and I know you won't hurt me."

Chapter 21

His face was agonized for a moment, but then his control seemed to splinter. He hooked one arm around my waist, and with the other, he sent the remote and the remains of my dinner clattering to the floor. In another millisecond, I was trapped beneath 200 pounds of furiously turned-on male and my heart was beating triple-time. Rocking back on his knees between my spread legs, he scooped my breasts in both hands and buried his face between them. His breath was hot and I was pretty sure I was about to have my first non-self-induced orgasm in several years right this second. My back arched, giving him better access, and he turned his face to lave one nipple. The friction was incredible and my hands went to his sleek shoulders, fingers digging in, which was good because I needed something to anchor to as soon as he moved his other hand down to rub my aching center through my already damp panties. I flew apart right there and cried out his name.

The sparks had barely finished coalescing behind my closed eyelids before I heard him raggedly whisper in my ear,
"Lucky, I can't wait, I'm sorry…," and then he was sliding my underwear down my hips. His erection was heavy between his legs and I shakily pushed myself up on one elbow and reached for its straining length.

I gripped it lightly, running my thumb over the bead of moisture at the tip. Lifting my thumb to my mouth, I sucked it and watched his eyes go molten.
"Nobody's asking you to wait," I said, feeling the tension inside ratchet back up like I'd never had it released. I couldn't think, couldn't see anything but him, and I wanted him inside me worse than I'd ever wanted anything in my life.

With a growl, he flung my panties across the room and grabbed my hips, pulling me down the bed to him.
"I won't last long," he rasped. "I haven't—"

"
Chance, shut up." I said fiercely, locking my arms around the back of his neck and yanking him down to me. I plunged my tongue in his mouth as he entered me in one slick, slamming thrust, and that was it. I was a goner. Seconds later, I was dimly aware of his groan, and his erection pulsing inside of me, filling me with warmth, and I opened my eyes to look into his face.

"
I still love you," I whispered, dazed with the realization.

"
I know," he replied darkly. "But you shouldn't."

The second king-sized bed in the room went unused that night. I slept naked, as Chance had predicted, curled on my side with Chance's hard length a heated bulwark behind me between me and whatever pitfalls the universe would choose to set for me next. I didn't mention it, at risk of inflating his ego and shattering the fragile comfort level between us, but it was the first time I'd ever spent the night with a man. Even Brent, the professer-boinking ex-boyfriend that I'd been most serious about, had always found an excuse not to sleep over after one of our uninspired bouts of post-date coitus—he didn't want to foster a scenario of relationship-destroying mutual dependency or some such crap. In hindsight, he probably was off adding more notches to add to his bedpost, but the idea of that didn't even sting anymore. It only made me realize how much of a dingbat I'd been to keep him around.

I was dead to the world until I was pulled gently from a sweet dream by soft caresses and whispered kisses against the back of my neck. And since my hips had been cradled against his groin, it was easy for Chance to slip his already heavy erection smoothly inside me. Once he
'd finished his slick slide home, he held himself still with conscious effort. I could feel how tightly he'd leashed himself—his big body was tense against my back as a piano string. But he'd stopped moving so completely that I could feel every pulse of him inside myself. It was like his heart beating deep within me, and we were joined in the most intrinsic way it was possible for two people to be together. It was the most incredibly erotic thing I'd ever experienced.

"
I don't want things to be fast this time," he said softly, his breath brushing against my ear, eliciting a shiver of pleasure that began at the base of my neck and slid down to the base of my spine. "As I recall," he continued with a tinge of the old high-school Chance's humor, "Our first time didn't last as long as it could have either."

"
For a teenaged boy," I said, "I'm sure you weren't bad. But this is better." He shifted a fraction of an inch, causing my inner muscles to clench around him reflexively. "Much better," I breathed.

All of my nerve endings were focused intensely on where our bodies connected. He slipped his hand lightly down my belly to focus on the center of my pleasure, hidden in auburn curls. Slowly, achingly slowly, but with firm pressure, he began to tease me until my breath was ragged and I was gripping the sheet that still covered us so tightly that my nails should have ripped the fabric. I tried to focus, calm my breathing, drag out the sweet torture, but I could feel his hardness inside me and I wanted him to move, dammit.

"Chance," I begged brokenly. "You're killing me."

His chuckle sounded pained, but he stopped torturing m
e long enough to grab my hips and hold me still when I tried to grind myself back against him. "Not yet. I've got a reputation to salvage here."

My hip
-shifting had some effect, though—I could feel him growing impossibly harder where he was still positioned inside me. Then he was sliding back out and I caught my breath, but his fingers were back to their teasing circles.

Finally,
I thought. Let's do
this.

I was
burning up, my chest and face flushed and hot, and all I wanted him to do was slam into me long and hard, but to my surprise, he pulled free.

"
Roll over on your stomach," he rasped. I did, and his strong hands lifted my hips up and back toward where he kneeled. The friction of my smooth legs sliding along his hard calves made me whimper. I felt flooded with moisture as I quivered in front of him, feeling vulnerable with my ass sticking up in the air, but wanting his hardness back inside me in the worst way.

And then I felt the tip of his erection poised at my dampness. Just that much slipped in and I groaned and clenched the sheet even tighter. He was moving too painfully slowly to suit my rampaging need for completion.

"Dammit, Chance," I groaned. "Please!"

"
Oh, you'll live," he replied, and slapped me lightly on the rump and shifting forward just a bit more, filling me up another half-inch or so, but not enough. It wasn't nearly enough. I wanted to scream in frustration.

"
I promise you I will murder you with my bare hands if you don't fuck me right now," I gritted out, and with that, the dam broke and he slammed into me up to the hilt. I buried my face in my pillow to muffle my triumphant shriek, and he pulled back, almost all the way out, only to piston his hips back in, all the way in. There was no pain, only a fantastic fullness and visceral sense of oneness.

He fell into a hard rhythm that my hips bucked back on in counterpoint, but he
'd stretched out my arousal long enough that that final shimmering goal was just out of reach. His breathing was harsh in the silence of the dark hotel room and the subtle, musky scent of sex was intoxicating. I could feel his hands gripping my hips, hard. I whimpered. I was so close…

His hand reached around
me to work me again in tantalizing strokes and he increased his pace even more.

"
Come for me, Lucky," he growled.

"
Yes
," I shrieked, not even recognizing my own frantic voice.

And then his hips tensed in the final throes and he gave a low shout of triumph. His fingers pressed into my slick dampness, against my wet, swollenness, combined with the white hot jet of his release that bathed me inside sent me into the most mind-numbing intensity I
'd ever experienced. Completely mindless, I writhed against him, almost wanting it to stop and simultaneously never to end. My spasms milked him, drawing out the last of him, and with a heartfelt groan, he collapsed against my back and at the same time, rolled back to his side, taking me with him so that I wasn't crushed. Each movement wrung more pleasure from me that I didn't believe I could even still feel, but at the same time, a languorous lethargy spread through my limbs and I was asleep before I could even register the tear tracks on my cheeks, with Chance, replete, still nestled in my drenched warmth.