Star Bright (41 page)

Turning to the closet, she saw one of Parker’s shirts on a hanger. He’d gotten into the habit of sometimes bringing a fresh change of clothes when he spent the night, and he’d left the shirt behind one morning. She had washed it and meant to give it back to him the next time he came, but she’d forgotten.
Hmm.
She pulled the shirt from the hanger and held it up in front of her. After she had a long soak in the tub, gave some special attention to her hair, dabbed her homemade perfume in strategic places, and added a little makeup, the shirt just might do the trick, especially with nothing on underneath it.

Her gaze drifted to the door casing where the bug was located. That definitely had to be moved. She had plans for this bedroom, and she didn’t want any FBI agents listening in.

That night Parker arrived at Rainie’s late, and he was worried about leaving her alone for so long. No help for it. One of his horses had gone down, and he’d had to call Tucker over to diagnose the problem, which turned out to be colic. After treating the mare, Parker had felt it necessary to wait for his foreman, Toby, to get back from town before he left the stable. He trusted no one else with an ailing equine, and colic could be deadly. Only Toby had an experienced enough eye to know if the animal was taking a turn for the worse. The foreman also knew what to do if that happened.

When Parker reached Rainie’s back porch, he was out of breath from running the entire six blocks from his truck to her backyard. Since the second call from Agent Brandson, she’d fallen into the habit of keeping the kitchen lights off until he arrived to avoid arousing suspicion in case Danning was watching. Pressing close against the house to stay concealed by the dark shadows cast by the eave, he heard the television on inside the house. It sounded like a satellite music channel. Normally Rainie kept the television off until after he was inside, and even then, as per the FBI’s request, she kept the volume low. It was up a notch louder than usual.

Parker’s guts clenched. What if Danning was in there and had cranked up the volume a little because he knew the house was bugged? Every muscle in Parker’s body snapped taut.

Stay calm.
He couldn’t go off half-cocked and kick the door in. He reached sideways to tap lightly four times on the wood, spacing the knocks in a special tattoo so Rainie would know it was him. He sent up a silent prayer that she would answer right away. If anything happened to her . . . Parker couldn’t even go there in his mind. He’d come to love that girl so damned much. How he would live without her, he didn’t know, and he never wanted to find out.

An instant later, he heard the dead bolt slide free.
Thank you, God.
Then the portal cracked open.

“Hi,” she said in a stage whisper. “You’re
late
.”

He leaped up onto the porch and ducked inside. In the shadows, he saw Rainie move past him to refasten the lock. Then, before he could ask why she had the music turned on, she was in his arms, as delicious, warm, and sweet-smelling as fresh-baked apple pie. He gathered her close and felt only feminine softness under soft cotton.
No bra?
He ran a hand up her spine, his fingertips doing a quick search for a telltale band of elastic.
Definitely no bra.

While he was pondering that discovery, she cupped his face in her slender hands and kissed him, her lips parted, her tongue darting between his teeth. Parker didn’t know what to think. Was this
Rainie
? She was definitely issuing him an invitation—the kind that red-blooded, virile males had been eagerly accepting since the beginning of time. He ran his hand down the curve of her back, exploring with his fingers to find where the cloth of her top ended. Down, down, down. Not a top, he decided, but a shirt of some kind. Finally he came to bare, silken thigh. With a flick of his wrist, he dipped his hand under the material, and his palm met with soft, naked buttock.

Parker felt as if an M-80 detonated inside of his brain. Red flares of light flashed behind his closed eyes, and if he’d had a rational thought in his head a moment earlier, he didn’t now. She locked her arms around his neck and jumped to loop her legs around his waist.
Holy hell.
His arms were filled with warm, soft, willing woman. And then she was kissing him again, robbing him of the ability to think clearly, let alone muster any self-control.

She was all over him, her sweet mouth devouring his, her teeth nipping lightly at his tongue and lips, her unfettered breasts pressing softly against his upper chest. Parker still had a handful of soft, silken buttock, and he wanted to feel a whole lot more. Pivoting on one heel, he sandwiched her between him and the wall to help support her weight with the press of his body. Hands freed to explore, he skimmed his palms over her soft rump to find the dip of silken skin where the fullness tapered into firm, satiny thighs.
Oh, yeah.
With searching fingertips, he homed in on the feminine crevice between her legs until he found the tufts of damp, passion-slicked curls that guarded honeyed folds of hot, wet flesh.

Whoa, boy.
Only his hands didn’t seem to be receiving the messages from his befuddled brain.
It can’t happen this way.
But somehow it was. He’d fishtailed into a downhill skid, and none of his brakes seemed to be working.

“Not like this,” he managed to murmur against her lips between hard, jagged breaths. “Not like this.”

She made fists in his hair, covered his lips with hers, and invaded his mouth with a tongue so sweet and tantalizing that every rational thought in his head leaked out through his ears.
Rainie.

“Exactly like this,” she whispered urgently, her breath as ragged as his. “I
want
you.”

Parker had been imagining this moment for weeks and had his game plan all mapped out. He’d mentally choreographed every gentle kiss and careful touch, determined to make their first time together romantic and perfect for her.
Not.
The next thing he knew, he had her sprawled over the table like an array of smorgasbord delights, and he was devouring her like a starving man.

He moved his hips between her parted knees and jerked her shirt open. Buttons flew, hitting the wall and floor like high-velocity pellets, going
ping . . . plunk . . . ping.
In the dim light coming from the living room, he glimpsed her white, pink-tipped breasts, and before he could even register how perfectly shaped they were, he was pushing them upward with the cup of his hands so he could suckle her nipples. Not gently, no tantalizing buildup to make her want. He latched on and drew hard on the sensitive tips of flesh until they spiked into hard nubbins to be grazed with his teeth.

She jerked as if a 220-volt charge had just arced through her body, grabbed handfuls of his hair, and arched her spine in a convulsive spurt of pleasure. “Parker!” she cried out. “Oh,
yes
, oh, yes, oh,
ye-e-s-ss
!”

Her cries momentarily jerked him back to reality, and he almost clamped a hand over her mouth.
The bugs.
Providing a bunch of bored FBI agents with X-rated audio entertainment wasn’t high on Parker’s list of aspirations. But somewhere between thinking about muffling her cries and actually doing it, he lost the thought entirely, and all his common sense went with it. Her nipples throbbed against his tongue, so hard and distended that he could gauge every beat of her wildly racing heart. His body responded to the urgency in hers, sending his own needs into an upward spiral that made him tremble.

“Oh,
yes
!” she cried again.

Working her nipples with his mouth, he lightly trailed his fingertips down her sternum to her belly and then lower, bent on finding the sweetness at the apex of her thighs. She jerked again when he found his mark, and for a moment, he feared she might recoil. Instead, she lifted her hips and offered herself to him.

Parker’s daddy hadn’t raised no fool. One invitation was all the encouragement he needed. He dipped a finger inside of her and drew the slickness over the sensitive flange of flesh at her opening. At the first touch, she shrieked again, but he was beyond caring if someone heard her now. When her body started to jerk, the damned table started to rock with every spasm, the short leg thumping loudly on the floor. He stroked her faster and with more pressure until he brought her to climax. While she lay there limp and still quivering with the aftershocks, he peeled off his shirt, opened his fly, and moved back between her thighs to enter her. The instant her hot, wet slickness encased his throbbing shaft, he lost it.
Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
Only with a few table thumps for emphasis.

Approximately one minute later, give or take a few seconds, he collapsed on the tabletop, barely managing to catch his weight on one bent arm to keep from crushing her. His heart was chugging like an undersized locomotive trying to pull fifty loaded cars up a steep grade.
Damn.
He’d been waiting for this moment for weeks, and now it was over. He couldn’t believe it. Over the course of his adulthood, he’d come to pride himself on being a man with a slow hand. Pleasing the ladies had always been his number one priority. But now, with the most important woman of his life, he’d humped her like a rabbit.

“I’m sorry,” he managed to push out.

She looped limp arms around his neck. “Don’t be sorry. It was
wonderful.
”

Wonderful?

“It happened for me,” she whispered near his ear. “It actually
happened
for me, Parker. That’s the very first time, ever.”

He gave in to the pull of her arms to nestle his face in the sweet curve of her neck. Oh, man, how he loved her. It was so like Rainie to pretend that he’d made it good for her. He’d never known anyone with a kinder heart. “I’ll make it better the next time, I swear.”

She giggled and turned to kiss his temple. “You can’t possibly make it better. Didn’t you hear me? It happened for me.”

Slowly, Parker’s thoughts were starting to clear, and he could finally focus on what she was saying. It had happened for her? He tried to think what she meant, and then it hit him like a fist between the eyes that this was the first time she’d ever had an orgasm.

“You’re serious?” Parker could barely wrap his mind around that. No wonder the girl was a bundle of raw nerves. “Your first time
ever
?”

“My very first.” She touched the tip of her tongue to his skin, licking away the salt. “It was incredible.
You
are incredible.”

Incredible. He liked the sound of that, and it definitely went a long way toward soothing his bruised ego. He drew back to gaze down at her beautiful face. In the soft glow of light, she looked drowsy, a slight, satisfied smile curving her lips. Parker wanted to sweep her up off the table into his arms, carry her to bed, and make love to her again, the way she deserved this time, but, God help him, he didn’t have the strength.

He settled for straightening away from her before his arms folded under his weight, fastened his jeans, donned his shirt, and then sank to the floor, bracing his back against the wall. He needed a minute. Hell, maybe more than a minute. More like an hour. The lady had drained him dry. His brain still feeling like congealed mush, he went back over what had happened between them. Talk about a guy getting blind-sided. He’d never seen that coming.

She swung her gorgeous legs over the edge of the table to sit up. Pointy knees slightly parted, she unintentionally gave him a glimpse of sable curls.
Damn.
She was so beautiful, perfect in every way. As she wrapped the destroyed shirt around herself, he glimpsed small, flawlessly shaped breasts and a waist so slender that a man could encircle it with his hands. He wanted to thump himself on the head. A woman like Rainie should be savored like fine wine.

She slid off the table and came to sit beside him. He curled an arm around her shoulders and drew her close against his side, wishing he had it all to do over again. She rested her head on his chest and sighed, sounding blissfully content.

“Will it always be like that?” she asked softly.

“Better. It’s been a while for me, and I wanted you so bad that I lost control.”

“I like when you lose control.” She snuggled closer. “We did it on my
table.
It was just like in the movies. I’ve always watched those love scenes and wondered what could possess people to act so crazy, tearing at each other’s clothes and never even making it to a bed. Now it’s happened to
me
.”

Parker couldn’t help but smile. Maybe he hadn’t made such a poor showing, after all. She certainly seemed to think the sex had been phenomenal. His smile deepened. As much as Rainie might have experienced during her time with What’s-his-name, she’d clearly never been treated to all the joyous mysteries of real lovemaking.

He looked forward to introducing her to more of those pleasures.
Later.

Chapter Sixteen

R
ainie wanted to make love again right away. She felt like a child who had just gotten her first taste of candy, and one small bite had only whetted her appetite for more. When she remembered how it felt when Parker kissed her breasts, a zing of anticipatory excitement went through her. Unfortunately for her, Parker looked completely spent, his dark head tipped back against the wall, the arm that he’d draped around her shoulders limp and heavy. She decided to let him rest for a few minutes before she suggested they do it again.