Running Wild (15 page)

She wiggled even farther back onto his thighs and his dick sprang free. Reflexively she reached out to grab it, but then ignored it for a second to bounce her free fist off her chest and give a guy grunt. “Big man eat nails and crack open nuts on head.” She had to admit, however, that the girth she’d wrapped her hand around felt very manlike and she stroked him through her fist.

Finn hissed in a breath and arched his hips to push into her grip.

She grinned down at him. “Who’s your mama, now, hotshot?”

His eyelashes tangled in the outer corners when he narrowed them at her. “You did not just say that.”

She merely gave him a brash smile and waggled her eyebrows at him.

“I am so gonna own you.” Gripping her hips, he lifted her an inch or two until her breasts were level with his mouth, then he latched on to her left nipple.

“Oh!” Lust was an electrified arrow shooting straight to the jangling nerve center between her legs. Her head dropped back and her hand slid away from his erection as she grabbed for his shoulders, anchoring herself with her nails. She watched him through slitted eyes as he worked his tongue against her nipple’s underside, pressing it against the roof of his mouth. His cheeks hollowed with each slow, strong suck.

She didn’t realize she’d been supporting her own weight until one of his hands left her hip to move inward. Hooking the leg elastic of her undies aside, he burrowed his thumb between the drenched lips of her sex and glided up its slick furrow. A needy sound escaped her as the rough pad of his thumb bumped over her straining clitoris.

He stilled for a nanosecond, then looking up at her, drew harder yet on her breast and made a second pass at her clit.

“Finn!” Oh, God, she was so, so close. “I need you in me. Now.”

He released her nipple with a pop, lowered her to sit on his upper thighs and cast a frustrated glance at his backpack. “Shit. The condoms are clear over there.”

He started to set her aside but she locked her ankles behind his back to prevent it. The movement pulled her forward to press right up against his hard-on and they both moaned.

“No,” she said with faux calmness, pleased to be the first to recover—if one could call all this thumping desire pulsating through her every nerve ending a recovery. She reached beside her to flip back the top edge of the sleeping bag.

Beneath it were a handful of Bareskins in their black foil-wrapped glory. XL, no less—although, please, like all rubbers wouldn’t stretch to accommodate a fricking bowling ball? “I grabbed a few from your gallon baggie.” Her lips twisted in a half smile. “You certainly are an optimistic guy.”

His eyes were so dark and hot, they all but smoked. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

Her damn Finn-aware channel clenched once again and she grabbed up a condom and tore its foil package open with her teeth. She’d been unconsciously rocking herself against his erection and scooted back now to give herself room to suit him up. “C’mon, c’mon,” she whispered as she fumbled the job, and Finn’s hand closed over hers.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “Much more of you touching me and things might be over before they begin.”

“Don’t want that.” She kicked off her panties.

“Nope. Really don’t. There.” He’d had his eye on the job at hand, so to speak, but looked up to shoot her a grin. “C’mere, you.”

She didn’t wait for a second invitation, but rather scooted forward and, bracing her hands on his wide shoulders, raised herself above the thrust of his sex.

His big hands grasped her butt to steady her and she delved between them to align his hard-on with her opening. Holding him in place, she slowly lowered herself. As the head of his penis penetrated her, she sighed out, “Ohhhhh.”

“Oh,
hell
, yeah.” His voice was low and raspy and his hands moved to her hips as though to press her all the way down. But he didn’t, even though her legs, in their lap-sitting—or in this case, lap-hovering—position, were beginning to tremble. “God, you feel good. You’re so tight.”

She clenched around him.

Finn groaned, then met her gaze head-on. “So talk does it for ya, huh?”

She tipped her nose up but lowered her hips another inch as she lied without a qualm. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mags Deluca has pretty tits and a tight pus—”

Clench, clench
. She slapped a hand over his mouth. But, dammmmmn. “Okay, maybe I like it a little.”

He removed the hand and kissed her knuckles. “I’d say more than a little.” His smile was knowing. “But, sure, let’s go with that.”

Oh. It was so time to grab hold of the reins and see if she couldn’t wipe some of that cockiness off his face. She relinquished the control she’d been maintaining over her thigh muscles and, dropping smoothly, impaled herself fully. But when she darn near came at the feel of him, so hard and deep inside of her, she had to question the intelligence of the move.

God, he felt good, though. And that was
before
he began to move.

The way they were situated, with her on his lap facing him, their range of motion was limited. But sitting loosely cross-legged beneath her, Finn did the butterfly wing thing with his knees, letting them rise one moment to slide her up his hard-on, then pressing them toward the mat the next, sinking her back down on him.

It caused that crazy itch inside her to build and build, yet something in the position wasn’t working. Well, it was
working
—in the respect that it felt amazing. But it wasn’t enough to push her over. “I can’t...” He had a grip on her butt and she made an involuntary shrugging-off motion. “Let go for a second.”

His hands slid away. “Not doing it for you?”

“It feels so good—but it’s just not quite right.” She licked her lips. “I can’t—” She planted her feet next to his hips. “You want to straighten your legs?” They must be going numb by now.

“I do.” He did so with alacrity, and having more room to move and the leverage of her feet under her, Mags raised her hips, then slapped them back down. And— “Oh, God—there!”

“Yeah?” He grinned at her.

“Oh, yeah.” She raised and lowered them again, raised and lowered. “Oh, definitely, yes.
Um!
” Her eyes slid closed as the sensation suddenly hitting just the right spot sent a preorgasm zing through her. “Oh, God, Finn, I’m going to—I’m so close. So, so, so, so—”

He slid his thumb over her clit and, on the apex of her next rise, licked her nipple into his mouth and gave it a hard suck. Sharp, undulating contractions detonated around the steely sex seated hard up inside her, pulling at it and trying to coax a climax out of him in return. “Oh, God, Finn,” she panted. “Oh. My. Gaw-w-wd.”

He shifted slightly and her breath caught in her throat as the small movement started an entire new cavalcade of contractions.

* * *

“C
HRIST
,” F
INN
MUTTERED
,
staring up at her flushed cheeks, at her white teeth sank into her reddened lower lip and her slumberous blue eyes as she stared blindly at him while she clamped like a velvet vise all around him. His testicles drew up, making him lose track of everything but his own drive for release. He fell back on his elbows and thrust his hips upward to shove deep inside of her.

The move lifted her off her knees and she slapped her hands to his chest to keep from being bucked off. He barely noticed as he held his position high and hard inside her. Then, groaning low in his throat, he exploded in pulsation after hot, mind-bending pulsation, with the feel of tight, slippery tissues still clasping and unclasping up and down his dick. “Ah,
God
, Magdalene!”

For once she didn’t correct him. The clutching around his cock ultimately slowed, then faded away and she sat atop him, blinking heavy-lidded eyes as she stared down without speaking. And a tiny smile curved her lips.

“I hate to break it to you,” she finally said. “But you didn’t make me scream.”

Then she collapsed atop him hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
T
TOOK
M
AGS
a while to catch her breath. She sprawled bonelessly atop Finn while his callused fingers moved lightly up and down her back, tracing her vertebrae, outlining her shoulder blades and gently circling within the shallow dimples above the rise of her butt. His fingertips against those particularly smooth-skinned spots felt scratchy and very male. She didn’t know quite what to say, because this felt...different from any sex she’d ever had.

It wasn’t, of course. She might feel a bit more emotionally fulfilled than she had with other men, but in the end nothing had truly changed. She certainly couldn’t afford to let Finn get too close. It was simply too mother-lovin’ difficult when things fell apart as, face it, they invariably did.

And truly, it was hardly surprising she’d experienced more emotions with him. Since the day they’d both arrived in El Tigre, they’d been thrown together in one outrageous circumstance after another. Yet the bottom line remained the same: Finn was a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy and the last thing they needed was for her to go all hearts-and-flowers schoolgirlie on him. Especially when what she actually felt was undoubtedly more gratitude than anything else.

Because she
was
grateful. For what had been one of the best orgasms of her life, no question. But more than that, for the way he’d taken on the troubles of a woman he’d never even laid eyes on before a few days ago. He’d thrown himself between her and the dangerous situation she’d found herself in without blinking an eye or counting the cost to himself.

So, making sure to plaster on the same free-and-easy smile she’d used to great effect with other men, she raised her head and let her hands slide from his shoulders to the mat on either side of his neck so she could lever herself upright. The move pressed her pelvis to his and arched her back into a cobra pose. It also squeezed him right out of her. Instinctually, she clenched deep inside in an attempt to keep him inside. But it was too late.

She ramped up her ain’t-we-got-fun smile.

“Dammit, Mags,” he snapped, “don’t do that!”

“Don’t do what?” Okay, so playing dumb was never particularly attractive. Still, sometimes when she felt cornered, faking ignorance was the only way to go.

“Don’t give me that big life-of-the-party smile when your eyes are saying ‘Get me the hell out of here.’”

“Oh, what bull. They aren’t saying anything of the kind.”
Were they?

“The hell they’re not. And I’m not just blowing smoke out my ass, here. I’ve met women like you before.”

“
Have
you?” Probably way too much frost coated her tone, but please—women like her? “And what, pray tell, are woman like me like?”

He looked her dead in the eye. “As I said, at first glance you give off this vibe of being, hands down, the coolest, most fun woman in the room. But the reality is, you’re one big ball of emotional dodge ’em.”

“Wow. Thank you, Dr. Phil,” she said even as an inner voice murmured,
Okay, pretty much
. But if so, he said that as if it were a bad thing, rather than intelligently well thought out and self-protective. Feeling rattled and defensive, she lifted herself off of him to sit on the sleeping bag. Suddenly uncomfortable with her nudity, she reached for her underwear. As she pulled on her panties, she gave him an insolent up-and-down before adding flatly, “I’m surprised you could bring yourself to have sex with me, me being so screwed up and all.” She slid her arms into the straps of her bra and reached behind her to fasten it.

He rolled to face her, propping his head in his hand. Clearly he wasn’t the least bit self-conscious about being naked and he met her gaze levelly. “Maybe I hoped I’d be the exception to your don’t-let-’em-too-close rule.”

“Please,” she scoffed. “This from the man ho who’s had a bazillion lovers?”

Genuine amusement lit his dark eyes. “Trying to put me on the defensive, darlin’? I give you points for the good ol’ college try, but it’s not gonna work. My man-ho days may well be behind me. I came on this trip in large part because I’ve been wondering lately if maybe it’s time to change my ways—to think about settling down. But to do that I knew I needed to be away from my family so I could honestly say no matter what I end up deciding that it wasn’t due to any pressure from them.”

“Sure, blame it on the caring family.”

His dark eyebrows slammed together and for the first time he looked annoyed. “I’m not blaming jack, I’m giving you the facts. And the facts are, I know what I read in your eyes and that was ‘Get me the hell out of here.’”

“Well, guess what, Kavanagh? You can’t read eyes for shit, because they were saying ‘That was
really
nice.’” With maybe a pinch of
And now that it’s over, get me the hell out of here.

“Nice? Seriously?” He sat up, his expression downright offended. “You thought it was
nice
? Then let’s try this again, Deluca, because I can sure as hell do better than fucking nice. I admit this round was short on foreplay.”

She’d thought it was just right, but panic at the idea of making lo—having sex again and being left feeling even
more
emotional made her heart drum out a rhythm like Thumper’s twitterpated hind foot. Somehow, however, she managed to arrange her expression into something she hoped at least appeared cool and collected. “Oh, let’s, do. Because being told I’m emotionally stunted really puts me in the mood.”

He swore under his breath, raked his fingers through his hair, then efficiently disposed of the condom, found his shorts and pulled them on. It was sweltering in the tent and he wiped his forearm across his forehead, then brought his wrist down to look at his watch. And said coolly, “You want to break camp then and get a few more hours farther downriver?”

His sudden shift in conversation might have been jarring if that panic thing hadn’t started up all over again. Even as she struggled to get her racing heart under control, however, she gave him a terse nod. “Yes. I think it’s probably a good idea to get going while I still have the nerve to get back in the boat.”

He cursed again and moved in on her, his hand reaching out to brush back a hank of hair that had escaped her braid. “I didn’t even think about that. You gonna be okay?”

“I hope so.” Almost immediately she sucked in a deep breath and gave a decisive nod. “No. I
will
be fine. You can be sure, though, that I’ll put my life jacket on the minute I step into the boat.”

He gave her head a knuckle rub and she blinked in surprise. She was having a tough time keeping up here, what with him trying to argue her to a standstill one moment, then getting all chummy playful with her the next.

“You know what, Magdalene?” he said. “You’re a damn good sport. And I have a feeling you’re a helluva lot tougher than you think you are, too.” Then he became briskly efficient. “Why don’t you take our packs down to the boat while I roll up the mat and bag and break down the tent.”

Fifteen minutes later, they shoved off the beach. For the first half hour, Mags sat stiffly vigilant, but little by little, as the water remained calm and nothing more exciting happened than spotting an occasional group of little squirrel monkeys swinging through the increasingly dense trees lining either side of the river, her tense posture relaxed. She lifted her tote onto her lap and hauled out the items that hadn’t fully dried during her earlier attempt, spreading them across the empty seat between her and Finn.

I have a feeling you’re a helluva lot tougher than you think.
His words kept running through her mind even as she tried her best to ignore them.

She
wished
she were tougher than she thought. Physically, she’d been known to display an occasional moment of bravery. Or foolhardiness. It all depended on who you talked to. As far as emotional toughness went, however, Finn had pretty much hit the nail on the head. When she ventured out to clubs and bars, she was the life of the party and it made her all warm and fuzzy when people thought she was fun and wanted to hang out with her.

But while she was a master at fooling herself on occasion, trying to do so in the long run simply wasn’t sustainable. She knew she had mama and daddy and what a shrink would undoubtedly call abandonment issues. She also knew it was past time she let them go. Unfortunately the latter was easier said than done. And when the only two real friends she’d made during her boarding-school days disappeared from her life, she’d taken it as a sign. God knew it was less painful to simply avoid deep, genuine connections in the first place. Because, show people your real self and odds were they were gonna walk away.

Okay, Heather had died in a car accident, so Mags could hardly cry abandonment over that one. That sure hadn’t made it hurt any less, though. As for Sarina—

The three of them, she, Sarina and Heather, had been the Three Musketeers—or Teeretts, as Heather had dubbed them—since practically the first day at Mags’s final boarding school, the one in which she’d decided to apply herself instead of willfully screwing up and getting herself kicked out yet again. She and Sarina had clung together after Heather’s death, but when Mags dropped out of college, Sarina had just blown her off.

It had been like a kick in the stomach, but apparently she’d no longer fit in her former friend’s plans. Sarina had always been ambitious, constantly seeking people to meet, social ladders to climb. And that apparently meant friends with connections, or at the very least, college degrees.

An-n-nd—
this is getting me nowhere.

She’d been doing her best to ignore Finn by keeping an eagle eye on the water. Her spirits lifted when she saw hundreds of brilliantly colored butterflies gathered on a tiny sandbank.

Soon after that, however, the water lost its clearness and grew cloudier until eventually it became downright muddy-looking. Here and there tiny villages comprised of a handful of open-sided huts cropped up. Straddling the shore and the edge of the river, they were built atop slender poles and looked as if they’d been constructed from mud and straw.

Really?
her inner critic demanded.
This is what it’s come to? Deciding what a handful of rickety huts I’ll never see again are made of?

She sighed. Considering how often she’d sneaked peeks at Finn even as she’d tried to keep her attention directed elsewhere, there was no getting around the facts. Her best in the ignoring department sucked.

He’d shaved the night before last, but the stubble on his hard jaw had grown almost thick enough to qualify as the beginning of a beard, or the precursor to one, anyhow. His mouth, framed by all that dark scruff, looked sexy, dammit. It was thoroughly sensual...and she could honestly say that wasn’t a word normally found in her vocabulary. She looked back out at the water before he could catch her gawking.

A few minutes later, however, she glanced at him again down the length of the boat. Only this time, in an attempt to avoid looking at his face, she studied his hands.

That turned out to be even worse than thinking about his mouth, because like a needle stuck on an old-fashioned, scratched-up vinyl record and endlessly playing the same few words over and over again, memories and remembered sensations of those hands on her kept repeating themselves in her mind.

She clutched her head. “Errrrgh!”

Pulling his watchful attention away from the river, Finn pinned her in that direct, dark-eyed gaze of his. “Taking up growling, darlin’?”

She grimaced. “I hope not—at least it’s a new-to-me skill. I guess I was thinking out loud.”

“Quite despondently, too. What’s bothering you?”

She shrugged. But his willingness to demand answers or start discussions on subjects she’d avoid like an Ebola outbreak made her revisit him saying that maybe he hoped to be the exception to her penchant for avoidance. He had put what
he’d
like right out there as if it didn’t take courage, even though he’d basically said he’d like her to let him in. And the ease with which he’d owned up to it made her ashamed of her own cowardice.

So maybe she owed him a truth in return. She took some deep breaths, then raised her head to look straight at him for more than the fleeting seconds she’d been directing his way since she’d settled down enough to look at anything other than her white-knuckle grip on her seat. She licked her suddenly dry lips.

And confessed, “I didn’t require more foreplay.” She waved a hand. “Earlier, you know?” she clarified, in case he didn’t have a clue what she was babbling about—even though it hadn’t been that long ago. “Your foreplay was the exact right amount.”

* * *

J
ESUS
,
SHE
WAS
killing him here. Finn had been doing his damnedest not to look at Mags too often since leaving the beach. Not only did he think she needed the space, but every time he got her in his sights, he also promptly pictured her all naked and hot in his arms, which in turn made him relive the expression on her face and the little sounds she’d made when she’d come for him. And God knew he didn’t need that.

Even with her in his direct line of sight, he’d done a damn fine job of keeping his eyes off her by concentrating on the river—which, after this morning’s mess, was probably a better use of his focus anyway. Plus, after having had the river virtually to themselves, boat traffic was beginning to appear. Way more than he would’ve guessed.