The Gift (16 page)

Next time. There would be a next time. He almost came then, but held himself in check. “I feel like a
high-school kid going all the way for the first time,” he confessed. “Don’t know how long I can—”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “Stop.”

Maybe he couldn’t see her as clearly as he’d like, but he sure as hell
felt
the woman. Her nipples were firm nubs against his chest. She wasn’t small and delicate. Not Beth. She was tall and sturdy and fearless, though she oozed feminine sexuality with every breath.

And for now—at least tonight—she was his.

His hands slid over smooth skin as he opened her jeans and savored the gentle slope of hip to waist. Then he brought his hands around and filled them with her delectable breasts. She responded by thrusting her hips even more firmly against him, and punctuated that with a strangled gasp.

He could definitely relate.

“I want all of you,” he murmured.

“Ditto.” She eased her hands into his jeans, flush against his hips, shoving them downward. “So what’s stopping you?”

“I don’t have…” He was a grown man. He should have kept condoms around, but there hadn’t been a call for them in years. “Protection.”

“I do.”

He chuckled. “I should’ve known.” And he kissed her hard and fast and deep.

She trembled as he savored every inch of her exposed flesh against his hands. But he wanted more.

He eased her down to the bed, dropped to one knee beside her without breaking their kiss. He cupped her breast again, brushed her nipple with his thumb until her moan filled him. She was everything he’d dreamed she would be. More.

Dragging his mouth from hers, he kissed his way
down her long, slender neck and found the rampant beat of her pulse. Gathering what patience he had left, he rested his lips there until she pressed her breast eagerly against his hand.

Her small, firm breasts had beckoned to him since that first day out on the highway. The fact that she walked around braless all the time added to her appeal. He seriously doubted she did that to entice men. No, Beth Dearborn probably did it for either comfort, practicality, or downright orneriness.

And he didn’t care. All he knew was the need to taste her. He kissed his way lower, then returned the torture she’d inflicted earlier by using his tongue to trace the shape of her swollen nipples.

“Oh,” she whispered, and gripped the back of his head with her hand. “That feels…amazing.” She offered more of herself to him.

Starving for what she offered, he closed his mouth over her and feasted. She panted and raked the back of his neck with her short nails. Her soft purrs and moans urged him on, reminding him what they both wanted.

The feel of his erection brushing against his jeans reminded him that they weren’t nearly as naked as they could be. “I think it’s time we both shed some denim,” he said.

“Past time.”

He started to slide hers down her thighs, but she grabbed his wrist.

“Wait.” She reached into her front pocket and withdrew something. “We’ll need these.”

“More than one. Good girl.”

He pushed his jeans down and stood to completely rid himself of his boxers and socks. In the partial
light from the doorway, he saw her reach toward him, holding her arms up to urge him back to bed.

Unable and unwilling to resist her invitation, he slid his long body against her softer one. They fit well together. Almost as if they’d been made for each—

Don’t go there, Malone. Not now. Not yet.

She turned to face him, her mouth hot and hungry. Now all he had to do was remember how to ride a wild mustang.

Beth savored Ty’s unique taste, hot and commanding. His kiss was thorough, wet, wicked, and she welcomed it, even while she yearned for more. Much more.

She wondered what surprising breakthrough she might discover next in this man’s bed. His gentleness, wildness, sense of humor? Oddly, she felt no fear now, only wonder and want. No invading voices or memories—no horrifying images or nightmares. Only Ty.

Still, the niggling voice in the back of her mind told her to hold back, just a little. Keep control. Don’t let go completely. Don’t let down her guard. Don’t let them get her when she wasn’t looking.

Yet…as his lips left hers to drift down her throat again, the voices were drowned out by the roar of desire through her blood. Her breasts swelled against his firm chest, and she ached to feel his hot mouth tugging against her again.

Naked and yearning, she relished each touch of his lips, each stroke of his tongue against her flesh. She felt vaguely distanced from her body, almost an observer, yet acutely conscious of every spiraling need that thundered through her.

Like the storm, her mind tried to reason.
You’re letting go, Beth. Losing control.

But she couldn’t stop this. She’d finally met a man strong enough to push her beyond her coveted self-control. No, not just him. It was their mutual, combined desire and need overshadowing all else. And she had no choice but to allow it to burn free.

That realization brought her a moment of terror, and she stiffened.

“You all right?” he asked, nibbling the lobe of her ear. “Should I stop?”

She laughed, a low throaty sound. “If you do, I’ll have to throw you down again and have my way with you.”

He didn’t laugh. He hovered over her. “You’d better open that condom now.”

“Oh, my.” Beth caught her breath and opened one of the packets. She hadn’t even had the chance to explore his body as much as she wanted yet. “You want to play rough, cowboy?”

“Right now I don’t even care if you call me cowboy.” He kissed her again to punctuate his statement.

The emptiness inside her clenched deep and hard where Ty would soon fill her. She tingled all over as she eased her hands between their bodies. He rose slightly to accommodate her.

He was hot. So hot. A scorching fire swept through her as she closed her hand around his impressive erection. “My, my,” she whispered. “You
have
been holding out on me.”

“You’re killing me here.”

“Not yet, I’m not.” She savored the petal-softness
at his tip, the vital, pulsing power of his length. This was Ty, and she wanted him more than anything.

All of him.

Her hands trembled slightly as she rolled the condom over the tip of his penis and slowly down the length.

“Definitely killing me.”

His words and his gasp made her laugh quietly again. The act of protecting them both didn’t dampen their desire. On the contrary, it merely fueled their need.

Beth wrapped her arms around his muscular back and dragged her long legs up the backs of his. “What are you waiting for now?” she invited.

Her body cried out for his warmth as he abandoned her to the cool evening air and kissed his way down her belly. Instinctively, she tightened her grip on him, but he winced and slipped from her grasp, lowering himself between her thighs.

Beth hadn’t anticipated this—not the first time. Anticipation erupted as gooseflesh as he kissed the curve of her hip and slipped his hands beneath her bottom to hold her. The part of her that wanted to maintain control tried to object, but couldn’t. She couldn’t break away.

She wouldn’t.

He held her pleasure firmly in his hands, angling her hips to his will. There was a quiver of pleasure deep in her core, and it spread ruthlessly as he kissed her inner thighs and eased them farther apart.

Even though she knew his intent, she still gasped when his mouth covered her slickness. The man’s tongue was wicked and wild and wonderful.

So much for being out of practice.

Scalding weightlessness filled her body as he brought her higher and higher toward total loss of control. She could only pray she returned unscathed.

All she knew was this gift of pleasure—beautiful, delicious, wanton pleasure. She’d denied herself this level of abandonment all her life, unless asleep or drunk or possessed by a dead spirit. This Beth savored pleasure and joy only for herself and for the now.

Just this once. Just this once…

He’d awakened in her something she’d never known existed. This strange, foreign, alien thing within her. This ability to want and need and
give
in turn. This slumbering yet potent emotion of which she’d been blissfully unaware until now.

Until Ty.

The fever ravaged her as she heard a strange animalistic sound and vaguely registered it as her own primal growl of pleasure. Her need was primitive, almost savage.

She buried her fingers in his hair and held him to her as she climbed toward a place she had tried, in the past, to avoid. Now she had to find it or die. Everything she had depended on this moment, his mouth, her body, and the incredible joy.

He pushed, he sought, he claimed. His hands on her hips held her captive as he ravaged her with the sweep of his tongue, the scrape of his teeth. Her head tossed from side to side and her hips thrust upward, demanding more than she could bear.

The first climax hit her like a punch as she shattered
in his grasp. A tsunami of convulsive joy swept through her, carrying her away on a sensual voyage.

She had relinquished control, and nothing bad had happened. Beth wanted to shout her discovery to the world, but her lover was busy bringing her back to reality, and reminding her there was still more to come.

She felt herself actually blush at the double entendre.
What has
come
over you, Dearborn?

Then, as he kissed her thighs again and eased himself slowly upward, she remembered what—and who—had come over her. He teased her belly button with his tongue and cupped her breasts with his farmer’s hands. Every inch of her was so sensitized, she wanted to shout from the merest touch of his lips, his fingers.

But she knew there was more. And now he would give it to her—all of it. All of himself.

A foreign stinging sensation began building behind her eyelids, and she blinked. Beth Dearborn did
not
cry after good sex. What was that about?

She couldn’t take the time to analyze her emotions now, because Ty and her hormones were in total command.

He touched her face, his fingers long, rough, and enticing. She tried to see his eyes but couldn’t, so she conjured their turquoise depths from memory. It was enough, for now.

His mouth covered hers again, and she tasted herself, strange but not unpleasant. She moaned when he finally covered her with his body, all the while stroking her tongue with his own.

She might not have been with a man for a while,
but she wasn’t some innocent virgin. She knew what came next. She wrapped her legs around his waist, reached between them, grasped his throbbing penis in her hand, and guided him home.

“Now, Ty. Now.”

His deep thrust made her breath come out in a hiss of pure fulfillment. All those years of running and martial arts had left her toned and strong, and she used her lower body strength to hold him deep and hard and fast.

“This is gonna be over before it started, if you keep that up,” he warned, nose to nose.

“Let’s try it anyway.” Beth wrapped herself around him like shrink-wrap. “Ride me, cowboy.”

He tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a gasp. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

His voice was ragged, but his movements were slow and strong. Beth answered him stroke for stroke, hungry for every blessed inch, answering and wanting more.

Wet and hot, her body hugged and held him. A sigh left her lips each time he withdrew and returned to fill her again. And again.

She felt so whole, so…wanted.

As he found his rhythm inside her, his thrusts probed deeper, became more forceful. Even with her legs around his waist, Beth couldn’t seem to get close enough, couldn’t let this end without taking all he had to give.

He answered her unstated plea, demonstrating that she could not only take all of him, but that she could want him even more. The muscles of his shoulders and back were rigid cords beneath her hands.

Each stroke drove her closer to the brink. She fell
into a dark pit of pleasure and sensation, where thoughts and fears lost their power. Where painful memories surrendered to the more potent and pleasant forces of the present.

Her body contracted beneath and around him, drawing him inward and answering him thrust for thrust. Each time he buried himself inside her, she found a more delicious level of madness.

Her mind filled with a rainbow of colors. The colors gave way, blurring and dissolving completely when she came again. She surrendered to the physical urgency as the explosion crescendoed. She expected to make her way gently back to reality, but it happened again and again.

“Oh. My.” She bucked against him, on fire. He took her higher and higher into this unknown place, this world of pure carnal bliss. Fractured yet complete, filled with only this man, as he brought her to orgasm again, seeming determined to keep her there.

Then Beth realized why this was different. She felt Ty—literally. Not only him inside of her, but his pulse, his heat, and his sensations. She sensed the length of him and tingled along with him.

Oh…oh, God.
Did all men feel so hot inside when they had sex? This had never been part of her gift. Why was it different with Ty?

Maybe because she wanted it to be different? Better? More important? No, because it
was
better, different, and more important. She savored feeling what he felt. So she took that next step—that extra risk. She let her guard down even further. Deliberately.

Instead of fear and death and violence flooding her mind, sensation and tenderness enveloped her. No one and nothing except she and Ty existed now.

Joy filled her. Not only did she let him into her body in the most intimate way a woman can take a man, but she shared an even more sacred part of herself. Would he know it, somehow? Until now, she’d only had empathic experiences with the dead. Why this was happening, she didn’t know, but she
liked
it.

She
loved
it. Loved him?
Later. Later.

Slowing her rapid breathing, she gathered her thoughts, mentally unlocked the vault at the back of her mind she’d kept carefully blocked for so long. Ty merged more fully with her, and she welcomed him, savored every nerve ending.