Ready (14 page)

His nostrils flared, inhaling it as his cock grew even harder in his shorts.

He straddled her and rubbed it against her mound.

She arched under him. “Do it again!”

He did, but then he stopped moving.

She looked up at him, anticipation shimmering in her eyes. “Aren’t you going to touch me?”

“When I’m ready.” This mating dance was more exciting than anything he’d ever known.

“Be ready now,” she practically yelled at him.

He shook his head, smiling. “I’m still looking.”

“Are you afraid you can’t do it right?” she goaded.

He sucked in air, spellbound by the passionate creature she’d become. She arched her back, the demand in her posture leaving no doubt what she wanted.

And he wanted to give it to her.

Reaching out, he lightly brushed the underside of each beautifully curved mound. She quivered.

He looked up at her face. “Is that what you wanted?”

Her eyelids had fallen to half mast, her mouth open slightly as she sucked in shallow breaths close together. “More.”

Just one word and not even a demand, but he acceded. They both knew he would. He began to draw circle after circle on each soft mound, purposefully keeping his fingers away from her extremely tight, blood-engorged nipples.

“Joshua…” It was a breath of need and the primitive male animal in him rejoiced in the sound.

“What do you want?”

“You
know
.”

“Say it.”

She glared. “Do you think I won’t?”

He just waited. How far would they push this sexual game before they both exploded?

“Touch my nipples. Suck them, Joshua. Please.”

The
please
destroyed his control and he released her hands to close his over both proud breasts. He kneaded her flesh, drawing her nipples between his fingertips. Rolling them between his thumb and forefinger over and over again, he grew iron-hard and her succulent points became more and more engorged with blood until they were about twice their normal size.

She grabbed his head and pulled his mouth downward. He opened it over one hard peak and then sucked it inside. When he started to suckle, she lifted them both off the bed with the power of her response. They fought the sensual battle, him pleasuring her, her body demanding more and pleasuring him with each movement until he could barely breathe, his chest was so tight.

He reared back and yanked her flannel pants off, exposing the smooth flesh of her thighs and the golden curls of her mound. He buried his face in it, taking another deep breath of her scent, his body shuddering in reaction to it. He had to taste her.

Without warning, Joshua’s tongue parted her nether lips and caressed her wet and throbbing clitoris. Every nerve ending in Lise’s body went on red alert and she pushed herself against that marauding tongue, needing more. Always more.

He pushed her thighs wide, exposing her to him in a way that made her totally vulnerable to his mouth…to his desires. But she didn’t feel vulnerable. She felt powerful.

This was not the safe, accommodating sex she’d known in her marriage. This was wild, primal, and intense.

She exercised her power, closing her thighs, taunting him again with her refusal to be dominated. At the same time, she arched her pelvis upward, inviting him to try.

“Do you want my mouth on you?” he demanded in a guttural roar.

She gyrated her bottom, brushing his lips with the hair on her mound and then retreating. “What do you think?”

His answer was to slide his hands between her legs and push her thighs apart just as if she wasn’t trying to hold them together as hard as she could. Exerting pressure until her muscles were stretched just this side of pain, he relentlessly opened her body completely to his questing mouth.

“Yes, Joshua, yes!” She loved the game, reveling in the ferocity of their lovemaking.

“Do you want to come, sweetheart?”

He didn’t wait for the answer he had to know already, but started licking all over the sensitized heart of her again. She couldn’t form a coherent thought after that, but she did make a lot of noise. Just none of it could be recognized as words.

He thrashed her swollen, slick flesh with his tongue until she was straining against his hold on her thighs and her fingers were buried in his hair, pulling and pushing from one second to another. Then he took her clitoris between his teeth and sucked.

She shattered into a million bitty pieces, her scream echoing in the room around them. More heated wetness gushed from the core of her and he lapped it up like it was irresistible nectar.

Bucking against the tongue that would not still, mini tremors shook her, keeping every muscle in her body tense. She began to sob. The pleasure was just too much.

“Joshua, please!”

He lifted his mouth and she collapsed back onto the bed. Her body trembled from head to foot. He kissed the inside of both of her thighs and then her damp curls. “Beautiful.”

Her head went from side to side on the bed, no words making it past a throat raw from screaming. All of a sudden and without him touching her in any new way, her body bowed off the bed again, her muscles going into momentary rigor before she fell back in a heap of quivering limbs. Small, involuntary jerks shook her again and again.

“
What’s happening to me?
” She’d never experienced anything like this.

“Aftershocks.” He pressed another kiss to her thighs.

Moving upward, gentling the volcanic vibrations of her body with his mouth and the press of his body, he let her calm down until her breathing was almost back to normal and then he started it all over again. Touching her, kissing her, making her come. He brought her to two more climaxes in quick succession using both his fingers and his mouth.

The aftershocks went on and on until she lay, emotionally spent, physically exhausted, and unable to so much as lift her hand from where it again rested on his head.

Silent tears tracked down her cheeks. Her body did not visibly shudder with the earthquake going on inside her, but she’d cracked open a lost part of herself. She’d known this would happen and had been afraid of it, but she could not regret giving in to her need.

Joshua had given her something in return for her loss: knowledge of the wildly passionate woman living inside her. She was not a dud at sex, nor was this tumult of experience something she would ever diminish again as not worth pursuing.

He carefully disentangled her fingers from his hair and got up, stepping away from the bed. She was so sated, she couldn’t work up any interest in where he’d gone, but when he came back, he was wearing a condom.

He slid a pillow under her hips and then rolled on top of her, lining his penis up with her very wet, very swollen womanhood. She locked her hands behind his neck and twisted her legs around his, opening herself to him as completely as it was possible for her to do. No more subterfuge, no more she-wolf games pretending she wanted to hold anything back from him.

He hooked her knees over his forearms so that she was spread even wider, ready to receive him.

“Lise?” She saw the question in his eyes and she gave him the only answer possible at that moment.

“Yes, please, yes.”

He slowly pushed inside. Despite her slick wetness, her body had trouble stretching to accommodate him. Rocking her hips and thrusting his pelvis in rhythm, he eventually achieved total penetration.

When his pelvis met hers, she felt stretched almost beyond capacity, pushed to the limits of her endurance, and she could only be grateful she was so slick with her own arousal. No way would it have worked otherwise.

“You’re big.”

He laughed. “Is that a problem?”

“I don’t think so.”

Lise didn’t sound too sure of herself, and Joshua wanted to laugh again. She’d gone from fierce to uncertain in the space of a heartbeat.

He pulled out of her clinging heat and thrust into her, causing her to gasp and her eyes to fly wide. She felt so damn good, better than he’d fantasized, and that should have been impossible.

He smiled a predator’s smile and met her eyes. “We fit.”

She licked her lips. “Yes, we do.”

She turned her face into his chest and bit him, not hard, but his precious she-wolf was leaving her mark.

His jaw locked and he kissed her. Hard. She kissed him back and he could feel the sexual tension building in her again.

Amazing.

He started moving in an age-old rhythm he made uniquely theirs. She thrust up against him, her inner heat clasping him so tight; each tiny movement made his head feel like it was coming off. He felt himself losing control, her renewed arousal sending him straight into oblivion, and he pistoned against her, not even sure if he could hold back until she came again.

He felt his body going rigid, the pressure building at the base of his erection, and then he was exploding with nuclear proportions, and incredibly she was crying out with him, straining her body toward his. She bit him again, right above his left nipple, and it was a lot harder than the first time.

He reveled in the primitive mating act and felt himself spurt again inside her. His climax lasted longer than any he’d ever known, but they both collapsed at the same time.

He kissed her, savoring the sweet softness of her lips. “Damn, Lise, you’re good.”

“I’d say we’re good together.” She turned her face into his neck, but he could feel the smile on her lips. “I didn’t get to touch you, though.”

She said it like a question and he grinned as well, feeling way too good for a hardened mercenary. “I only had one condom.”

“Oh.”

He could tell she still didn’t understand.

“If you’d touched me, I would have lost control too soon. I wanted it to last.”

“I guess we’d better invest in a big supply then, because next time,
I want to touch
.” She gave a huge yawn. “I’m sleepy.”

“I’d better move before I crush you.” Or got excited again.

“But this feels good.”

It did. Too good, but they couldn’t make love again and if he stayed on top of her, that’s what he’d want to do. Besides, he had to take care of the condom.

He forced himself to get up, go to the bathroom, and clean up before he climbed back into bed. He didn’t have to pull her into him. She sought out the warmth of his body the second he was horizontal.

He hugged her.

“That was incredible,” she whispered against his chest and then kissed where she’d bitten him. “I hurt you—I’m sorry.”

“It didn’t hurt, little she-wolf. I liked it.”

“I did, too.”

Lise woke up throbbing from another erotic dream and rolled onto her back…or tried to, but there was a big, warm body that was where hers was trying to go.

It all came back.

The phone call from Nemesis in the middle of the night. Joshua and her making love.

The feeling of both losing and gaining something in herself.

Her body tingled from remembered pleasure, which was not to say that waking up beside one-hundred-and-ninety pounds of masculine perfection wasn’t pretty pleasant in itself. It was—oh my, yes, it was.

“Morning, Lise.” His voice rumbled in her ear.

She hugged the intimacy of waking up beside him tightly to her heart. “How’d you know I was awake?” She hadn’t moved the tiniest bit since trying to turn onto her back.

“You’re breathing like a woman who woke up remembering what we did last night.”

Heat started at her toes and worked its way up her body. “I did.”

That husky voice, sounding all sexy and sated, was
hers
. Incredible.

She’d never once in all her life sounded so much like a sexpot. She liked it. She liked knowing she could match Joshua’s primitive passion as well. Another man would have made her feel awkward about the way she’d behaved the night before, but not Joshua. Of course, another man would not have engendered that response.

Only this one. “Last night was unbelievable.”

He moved beside her, letting her body settle back, and he leaned above her on his elbow. “Yes, it was.”

His dark brown eyes shimmered with unnamable emotion as he leaned over to kiss her, his mouth making promises she tried very hard to remember were nothing more than physical. No matter how it felt.

He started nuzzling his way down her neck, his kisses making her shiver. “I’ve never had it so good.”

That shouldn’t be possible. She knew he’d had a lot more women than she’d had men. His oodles to her two weren’t even sporting odds, but she believed him. Because what had happened between the two of them had been something very special.

“I guess you know I haven’t, either.”

His eyes questioned her. “Never?”

“I told you my marriage wasn’t passionate.”

“Were you married to a eunuch? Lady, you are hotter than an erupting volcano when you make love.”

She laughed, feeling free and full of life. “No, just a man who made a better friend than a husband. It’s too bad neither of us realized that when we were eighteen.”

“None of us make the best decisions when we’re that young.”

She remembered him saying he’d entered the army when he was eighteen. Did he regret it? “Why did you go in the army so early?”

“I wanted to be a soldier. My dad was an Army Ranger. He died on assignment when I was four, but I can still remember him. He was a big man, strong and quiet. As much as Lee always treated me like his own, a part of me knew I wasn’t.”

“So you followed in your real dad’s footsteps?”

“Joining the Rangers made me feel like I had part of him to carry on. Wherever he was, I wanted him to be proud of me.”

“I bet both your mom and your stepdad already were.”

“Yeah, they were great parents, but there was something about me that didn’t fit. I always figured it was whatever I got from my dad.”

She didn’t doubt it. Joshua was a born warrior and there weren’t too many of those around. If his dad had been Special Forces, chances were he’d have been one of the few, too.

“I’m not so sure Mom and Lee are all that proud now. I operate in a murky world.”

She didn’t believe his family could be disappointed in him and told him so. Murky world or not, he was a man of absolute integrity, if a law unto himself.