Running Wild (19 page)

Her breath hitched in her throat for one second, two. Then she moaned low in her throat. He loved how responsive her nipples were and slowly he worked his way down to them. Cupping the full bottom curve of her right breast, he pressed it up to bring the hard bead of her nipple to his lowering mouth. Even as he wrapped his lips around it, he reached to toy with its mate.

And that was all it took to make Mags’s hips perform a languid little horizontal bump and grind against the bed’s top sheet.

Finn smiled against her breast, letting the nipple slide free. Releasing the other nipple he’d finessed, he scooted lower.

“Oh,” she murmured in disappointed tones as she arched her back and shifted restively. “
No
. Don’t stop.”

“I’ll give you something that’ll make you feel even better,” he promised. And slid down her body.

He loved the feel of her skin. It was so smooth and so soft, and he mapped it beneath his fingertips as he kissed his way down her diaphragm, her rib cage, her abdomen. Nothing, however, compared to the sleek wet furrow between her legs when he lowered himself to exhale upon it and his fingers finally arrowed in on their target.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, yeah, that is even better. Omigawd, right there!” she commanded as his forefinger quit circling her clitoris and bumped over the little ball bearing straining out of its hood.

But he was already sliding his finger down the slippery path bordered by plump outer lips and frilly inner ones until he reached her opening. Gently inserting a fingertip, he circled, dipping a bit deeper here, rubbing the ring protecting her entrance there. She started making breathy little noises and he had to resist the urge to either rock his cock against the sheets beneath them to get a little satisfaction for himself, or seat himself inside her to the root with one strong thrust.

Her hips rose and he slicked his finger back up her slit and thumbed her lips open. Then, looking up to meet her heavy-lidded gaze as she pushed up on her elbows to stare down at him, he lapped her the same way she had his dick, from her opening to her clit.

Another breathy “oh” exploded out of her throat and her elbows melted out from under her. She thrust her hips up as though trying to follow his tongue as it slipped down again to tickle the gates to her—what the hell had she called it, her vajiggy? Blocking everything else from his mind, he pressed her splayed thighs flat against the sheets. When he was sure she’d stay the way he’d left her—wide-open to him—he concentrated on driving her over the edge with his mouth and his fingers.

He could feel her getting closer...closer. But he continued to tease her, to bring her close only to back off. Finally, circling her clit with his lips, he tickled it with the tip of his tongue, then softly sucked. And hands gripping his hair, she exploded with a high-pitched little moan he took to be her version of a scream.

He stayed with her until the last clench and release faded and the hips she’d thrust ceilingward settled back on the bed. Then he pushed back and grabbed one of the rubbers he’d dumped on the mattress. Within seconds he was suited up and he dropped over her, catching himself on the palms planted by her shoulders. He thumbed down his erection, then aligned the head of his dick with her canal and slowly sank into the hot vise that was Magdalene’s sex. It wrapped around him like a Chinese finger puzzle, enclosing him,
enveloping
him, clutching at his cock when he retracted his hips, massaging it with lubricious strength when he thrust deep again.

“God,” he panted and lowered his head to kiss her for long seconds, minutes, years. When he finally raised his head, he gazed down at her. Her cheeks and lips were flushed with the blood that had risen to the surface of her skin and her eyes were heavy lidded and hot, the blue bluer than her day-to-day color.
Please, baby, please, baby, please
. “You are so fucking
hot
and you feel so good. I could rock inside you for years. Decades.”

“Centuries,”
she said, tightening around him. Her head tipped back on her pillow, turning restlessly from one side to the other. The position thrust her breasts up at him. “You make me feel so-o-o good, Finn. You’re so hard and you touch me in places...oh!” He’d shoved her knees up and caught her thighs in the crook of his elbows as he fell forward, tilting her pelvis to give him a straight shot to her G-spot. He wanted desperately to hammer inside her like a runaway pile driver, but gritted his teeth as he held himself to a slow in-an-out. But his testicles were drawing up and he didn’t know how much longer he could hold out.
Please, baby, please, baby, please
.

Dipping his head he captured her nipple and sucked it into his mouth.

“Oh, gawd,” she panted. “Oh, my...harder?” she said hopefully. “Please, Finn, a little harder.”

He thought she meant the pressure on her nipple, but her hands slapped down on his ass and tugged him to her.

“That’s it, baby,” he muttered and pulled almost all the way out before slamming back in. Pulled back and slammed in.

And bless her, Mags’s breath started that “Oh, God, I wanna come, I wanna come, I wanna come” rhythm that signified she was close. He adjusted her hips a fraction of an inch until he felt his cock slide against a knotty roughness again. Thrusting hard, he held, oscillating his hips to stay in contact with the spot.

And she almost—
almost
—screamed his name as she clenched and released around him, her breath shuddery and fast, and her fingernails raking across his hard cheeks, almost but luckily not quite scraping furrows in them.

It set off his own climax and he ejaculated hard and long inside the channel that still clasped him so securely.

When the last shudder of satisfaction faded, he disengaged his inner arms from behind her knees and carefully straightened out her legs. Then he slid in a heap atop her. He was wiped out, but raised himself long enough to look down at her. “You tell me this was a one-time thing again and I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

She blinked up at him, then gave him a sleepy smile. “Got it. Luckily for me, I guess, I had no plans to tell you that.”

“All righty, then,” he said and made himself comfortable atop her until she was ready to do this again.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

S
INCE
THEY
HAD
no way of knowing how many people would be on the train, Mags and Finn arrived at the station early the following morning. Neither of them had thought to ask the stationmaster last night. Vacating their room was fine with her. She had been filled with gratitude, in fact, for the bustle of gathering their belongings because she honestly hadn’t known quite how to handle waking up in Finn’s arms.

She’d like to lay that entirely on him. It would let her keep the sense of comfort and security that being all wrapped up in him, skin to skin, had given her—which, Lord love her, had been even better than she’d imagined it would be—with none of the accountability. But she’d awakened to find one of her arms flung diagonally across his chest and her hand curled around his strong neck. Plus she’d been draped half on top of him, her right leg tangled intimately between his from calf to crotch.

Not that there was anything wrong with that. Still, she wasn’t a stay-the-night kind of woman, so this was new territory for her. And she didn’t actually sleep around much these days. Discounting her showerhead, it had probably been two or three years since she’d gotten any sat-is-fact-shun. God knew she’d participated in her share of indiscriminate sex as a teen. She’d surrendered her virginity way too young and had slept with far too many boys who, once they’d gotten theirs, hadn’t even pretended to give a flying flick about her.

And who could blame them? It wasn’t as if she’d made them work for it. If you didn’t respect yourself, you could hardly kick when nobody else did, either.

She cast a glance at Finn as they walked down the outdoor platform to the first of the three cars attached to an engine that looked as though it’d rolled off the factory floor during Grover Cleveland’s administration. He climbed the metal two-step connecting the platform to the car, twisting to look inside.

Only to promptly step off again. “Full.”

“Holy crap.” She met his gaze. “It’s a good thing we decided to get here early.”

He nodded his agreement. “Let’s hope not everyone else decided the same thing and got here even earlier.”

They lucked out toward the back of the second car. It was definitely filling up, but there was still an available wooden high-backed bench on the right. Mags put her tote on the floor under the window while Finn swung his backpack onto the rickety overhead rack.

If trains came with rafters, their car would have been packed to them by the time the engine rumbled to life. More people crowded the benches than the benches were designed to hold, chickens in crates were stacked up in the aisle-three seats and a goat bleated behind them. Finn stood his ground when a family of five tried to crowd onto their bench built for four and already occupied by the two of them, sitting solidly between her and their attempt to shove him over. Glaring at him in disgust, they crowded onto someone else’s bench and she and Finn ended up with a beefy twentysomething man and a boy of about six.

It came as no surprise that the car wasn’t air-conditioned, but the good news was the windows opened. Mags enjoyed the almost cool breeze on her face as they chugged out of the station. The only thing she enjoyed maybe even more were the myriad conversations she eavesdropped on. The more entertaining ones, she translated for Finn.

And she felt...happy.

Several hours later, the bloom was off her pleasure. Her butt felt numb, she was hungry and her bladder was near to bursting, but she’d been in the bathroom once already and the longer she could put off revisiting that particular horror show, the happier she would be. She managed not to squirm in her seat, but her stomach felt no compunction about emitting a low growl in protest over its emptiness.

Their train wasn’t exactly a bastion of quiet, but Finn, who had pulled the bill of his baseball cap low over his eyes and slid onto his tailbone to doze, once again demonstrated his bat-like hearing when he turned his head against the back of the seat and said, “Y’hungry, darlin’?”

“Starved.”

“Sorry. I really slept like the dead for a while there.” Yawning, he pulled himself upright on the hard bench and stretched with enough vigor to make cracking/popping sounds in his joints. “I’ll get the backpack down.” He looked at her. “You need to use the can?”

“Oh, God, I really do. But, Finn, that room is a disgusting
pit
.”

“What’s worse, though, doing your biz real quick in crappy—you’ll pardon the pun—conditions, or trying to hold your bladder, only to have it scream at you forever?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” she said grumpily, which made him laugh and reach over to scrub the crown of her head with his knuckles as if she were a twelve-year-old kid. He added insult to injury by pretending not to notice when she sulkily jerked her head out of reach.

“C’mon,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’ll clear the way for us, then get some stuff out for lunch while you use the pit.”

She had to admit she felt much cheerier when she got back, and even better still once they’d eaten a portion of the provisions they’d bought at the bodega the night before. As Finn returned the pack to the overhead rack, she noticed the young boy straining to see out of her window from his position two seats away. Leaning forward, she invited him to sit by the window for a while.

He eagerly accepted. His name, she learned, was Maximilliano and for quite some time he knelt with his arms braced on the narrow sill and his head out the window like a puppy on a joyride.

But he didn’t believe in enjoying the view in silence. Instead, he kept turning to her with a smile that showcased a big new front tooth alongside an empty gap to point out some species of wildlife—or anything else of interest he spotted, be it the colors of a patch of flowers, a particularly brilliant bird or a sinuous emerald boa with a white dorsal line that he spotted as it looped back and forth on itself while settling on one of the tree branches.

She hadn’t spent much time around kids and even as she enjoyed his enthusiasm, she found his nonstop chatter kind of exhausting.

Apparently, it was even more tiring for him, for he began to yawn. At one point, he actually laid his head down, resting his right cheek atop his arms on the sill. His eyes slid closed and stayed that way for a couple seconds before he forced them open again. Mags had the feeling he’d fight sleep to the bitter end and, remembering the chocolate bar she’d bought last night, something she’d totally forgotten until this moment, she pulled her tote up onto her lap and dug through her stuff until she located it.

Maximilliano watched with big eyes as she ripped open the paper and split the bar into three pieces. She offered the largest one to him with the suggestion that he sit down to eat it, then gave the second to Finn and kept the last piece for herself. She enjoyed watching the boy’s absorbed delight as he slowly savored the treat. She hadn’t realized how much she’d come to take for granted after years spent living in America.

When the candy bar was gone, Maximilliano circled his tongue around his lips, paying special attention to the corners, then carefully licked each finger until he’d removed every vestige of melted chocolate.

Leaning around Finn, the boy’s father instructed Maximilliano to thank the senor and senora for sharing their window seat and their candy and to come sit with him now. Mags didn’t bother to correct her marital status; she simply returned a gentle
“De nada”
when the child followed his instructions.

When she looked over a few moments later, Maximilliano was slumped against his father’s side, sound asleep. She turned away with a smile to look out the window once more.

She couldn’t say how much time had passed when she suddenly sat forward in her seat.

Finn, who had been dozing next to her again—how on earth did he
do
that on this uncomfortable bench?—jerked and turned to look at her, fully alert. “What is it?”

Unexpected tears rose to her eyes, but she did her best to blink them back. “Home,” she said, turning to him with a tremulous smile. “At least...it’s starting to look like the area where I spent the most time back when I still lived here.”

“Yeah?” His face alight with interest, he leaned around her to peer out the window, his shoulder and side a warm, hard brand against hers. Almost as quickly he shook his head and straightened back up to give her a puzzled look. “I don’t get it. It looks exactly like it did the last time I looked at the scenery.”

She whipped around to stare out the window again herself and saw that he was correct. It took a moment to straighten things out in her own mind, but she finally turned back and said, “We’re entering the top of the Amazon basin and the lines of demarcation weren’t drawn with a ruler. So we’ll go in and out of it for a while. But that shouldn’t last long—pretty soon, now, we’ll be fully in the rain forest.”

“Are you nervous?”

“I probably should be, considering I’ve spent far more years away than I ever spent living here—and you and I will likely have to make our way on foot, perhaps from as soon as we reach our station.” She laughed, however, and thought wryly that if her expression were anywhere in the neighborhood of matching the way she felt at this moment, she must be lit up like a Texas stadium on game night.

And she admitted easily, “But I’m not—not even a little. I’m excited. God, just so completely excited. I loved it here as a kid and to finally
be
here...well, I’m more thrilled than I can say.” The light shining through the windows suddenly dimmed and she whipped around.

“There!” she said, reaching back to grasp his hand without taking her attention off the view. She ended up latching on to his wrist instead, but she simply worked her hand down his until she could thread their fingers together. And gave them a squeeze. “
That’s
what I’m talking about, Finn—that’s Amazonia. The canopy sucks up most of the light, which is why it’s greenish down here on the floor and, as you can see, dim and murkyish.

“What I don’t know,” she admitted, reluctantly prying her attention away from the addictive rain forest and swiveling around to face him again, “is whether goons will be waiting for us at the station. Joaquin didn’t strike me as the smartest guy in town, but we’ve been steadily heading in the direction of Munoz’s drug farm, so he has to have at least considered we’ll try to break Nancy and Brian out of it. And if he’s bright enough to figure that out he must realize the station we’re heading toward is one of Amazonia’s likely entry points.” Lowering her chin, she rubbed the furrow she felt gathering between her brows as all the potential problems started edging out her momentary euphoria.

“
One of
being the important part to remember,” Finn said matter-of-factly. “It’s
one of
the possibilities, Mags. It’s by no means the only one.”

Moving just her eyes, she looked up at him. “I wish I’d tried harder to find some hair dye. Problem is, everyone in this country already has dark hair and apparently even women going gray don’t use it because the few boxes I saw were blond and red. The latter of which,” she added, “I should have gotten. Guys can be very literal at times. If they were instructed to look for a blonde, they might have overlooked a redhead.”

“Quit beating yourself up,” he said in that no-nonsense voice of his that smoothed out the budding hysteria sending out threatening feelers. “We both know how good you are at disguise by makeup—so get cookin’ on that.”

She straightened her shoulders. “You’re right. And we both need to change into long pants, long-sleeved T-shirts and closed-toe shoes. Which—ugh—means a longer time in the loo, but there’s no help for it. A bazillion more insects inhabit the Amazon than we’ve run into so far.” She loosened her hold on his hand and dragged her tote up onto her lap. “I’ve got bug spray in here somewhere—we’ll put some on when we reach our destination.

“Crap.” She blinked at him as consternation pleated her brows. “That’s
if
we even reach it while the sun’s still up. I didn’t think to ask the stationmaster how long this trip would take.”

“No sense borrowing trouble at this point,” Finn said in that easy way he had of dealing with the negative possibilities they bumped up against, as if nothing—
nothing
—was insurmountable. “Let’s just assume, if we get in late, that they’ll have a hotel or hostel or whatever to accommodate travelers. And if they don’t—” He shrugged. “Hey, we’ve always got the tent. We’ll figure out a way to make things work.”

She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, rubbing her smooth cheek against his harder one. Bristles were already displacing the close shave he’d given it. Pulling back, she smacked a kiss on his lips, then pressed her face forehead-to-forehead, nose-to-nose, with his. That brought him so close his face was a blur, but she didn’t care. “Have I told you how grateful I am that you threw in your lot with me? I honestly don’t know how I would have handled all this on my own.”

“You kidding me?” Leaning back a little, he grinned down at her. “You would have figured it out just fine. You’re smart, you’re resourceful and you’re brilliant with makeup. Face it, you’ve gotten us away from the goons more often through the use of your makeup kit and costumes than because of anything I’ve done.”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but thanks for saying so, anyhow.”

“It damn well is, but you’re welcome.” He cupped her face in his hands and pulled back enough so they could see each other without going cross-eyed in the attempt. He kissed her gently, then dropped his hands to his lap. “Now get busy. Paint yourself up to look like a senorita.”