The Missionary (16 page)

Wren squeezed his hand. “Yes. I am assuming there’s an after. If I hadn’t assumed there would be an ‘after’, I wouldn’t have had the courage to get away from Cervantes in the first place. Not like positive thinking will solve every problem there is, but it goes a long way towards it.” She touched her lips to his chin, and then placed another kiss on his jaw line. “Stop trying to distract me.”

“I though distracting you was the whole point?”

Wren frowned. “You know what I mean.”

Stone laughed, but couldn’t hold the humor for long; her kisses were drifting from his jaw to the shell of his ear, her breath tickling, her hands skating oh-so gently across his bare chest. Warm hands, warm mouth, soft body, soft skin.
 

He knew he should resist. It probably was at least partially the after-effects of adrenaline and danger driving them both to this. But, then again, he’d wanted her, desired her before any of this had ever happened. Their relationship had definitely been pushed beyond the student-staff model. It was something else, now. They’d witnessed death together. Stone had killed for her. That brought two people closer than anything else ever could, or would.

She was kissing the corner of his mouth and caressing his chest, his shoulders, letting her fingers explore his stomach—careful to avoid his wounded left side—and her touch was a drug all its own, pushing away the pain and the exhaustion, filling him with the burning energy of desire.

He still had his hand on her ass, and he explored the taut muscles, then found her bare thigh. She breathed a moan as his touch slipped up the back of her leg, from the crease of her knee to just beneath her ass. He hesitated there, but Wren’s body writhed under his hand, silently begging him for more. His fingers pressed into the firm flesh, driving them both wild with need. She attacked his mouth with her own, devouring him, pleading with him.
 

Stone brushed a lock of black hair away from Wren’s mouth, grazed her cheek with his knuckles, and then bent down to capture her mouth with his. He held nothing back, this time. His hands found their way to her shoulders and back, just above the towel, his touch loosening the wrapped fabric. She shivered at his touch, clutched his shoulders with fierce fingers.
 

And then she pulled away again, but this time, her gaze remained locked on his as she released her hold on the damp cotton of the towel. With a deep breath, Wren pulled the tucked-in end of the towel free. The fabric sagged, then fell away from her body to pile on the floor around her feet.
 

And just like that she was naked in front of him.
 

Stone felt his chest constrict at the sight of her. She was all tan skin and dark hair and endless curves, her brown eyes half-seductive and half fearful. She stood still, one leg bent at the knee, black hair cascading over one shoulder. He let himself really look at her, finally. Full breasts, high and heavy, bell-curve hips and strong legs, hands at her sides and lips pressed together. She was nervous, but refusing to cover herself, he realized. She was waiting for his reaction, for his approval.

*
 
*
 
*

Wren was barely able to contain the trembling. She was hot, and then cold, and then hot. Her skin itched, crawling with invisible bugs. Her knees knocked, threatened to buckle. Part of it was the withdrawal, part of it was sheer nerves. She’d wanted this with Stone for so long, and now it was happening.

She could barely focus on him. She was on fire. She was ice. She felt every moment as if she was on the verge of throwing up, nausea boiling in her stomach like magma beneath the Earth’s crust.
 

She needed the heroin. It was the oddest sensation, needing something she didn’t want, had never wanted. But yet she
needed
, somewhere in her bones, the heady, forgetting rush of euphoria. It was all she could think about. For as much as she wanted Stone’s mouth on hers, for as much as she’d dreamed of Stone taking her in his arms and making love to her, all she wanted was to crawl into bed and hide from the sick need in her gut.

But Stone was waiting. She’d started this, approached him, forced him to face his desire for her. She couldn’t let the drug control her. She
wouldn’t
let it stop her from taking what might be her only chance to be with him.
 

She shivered as the cold hotel room air hit her bared skin. She felt her nipples pucker and go erect, both from the cold and from Stone’s gaze, hot and molten brown and rife with lust. She fought the inclination to cross her arms over herself, and instead let Stone stare at her. He wanted her. She saw it in his eyes, saw in the way his fingers clawed into his biceps until his short-clipped fingernails left crescents imprinted in his sun-darkened skin.
 

Keep going
, she told herself. She fought down the withdrawal-induced nausea and tried to focus on the memory of his kiss, his hands on her butt, his fingers caressing her skin. Chills overtook her, and she couldn’t quite stop the chatter of her teeth.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Stone asked, his voice suspicious.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m just…excited. And a little nervous. It’s been awhile.”

“It’s been awhile for me too,” Stone said. “Look, we don’t have to rush this. We’ll go home and take this at our own pace. It doesn’t have to be now.”

Wren closed the gap between them so the rigid tips of her breasts just barely brushed his hard, hot chest. “I want to. I want it to be now. Besides, you’re the one who said we may not make it out of this alive. Now may be all we have.”

His hands circled her arms, slid up and down twice, and then moved to her shoulder blades, down her back and to her waist. “I know what I said. But I don’t want you think I’m saying we won’t make it. We will. I promise you we will.”

Wren lifted up on her toes, clutched the back of Stone’s neck, and kissed him. In a book, the kiss would erase all of her aches and doubts and fears and sickness. In a book, she would be able to forget it all and lose herself in the taste of his mouth. He really
did
taste wonderful. But this was reality, and she couldn’t simply forget the blazing heat of chemical addiction. It was alive within her, boiling her blood in her veins, sending armies of crawling
things
itching under her skin.
 

She kissed him anyway, until she had to stop for breath.
 

His hands scoured her skin, scraped and stuttered over her hips, cupped her ass and squeezed it, tickled her thighs. His lips moved from her mouth to her neck, to the hollow of her throat and the delicate curve where neck became shoulder. Then, to her breastbone, and she shivered, hot all over and shaking, knees quaking. She couldn’t breathe, and now his lips were touching the upward slope of her breasts and the nausea stomping in her belly was nearly forgotten in the sweet ache of arousal.
 

She felt his mouth close over her right nipple, and the tug of his lips was matched by a tug between her thighs. She held on to him, focused every ounce of her attention on feeling him, only him. One of his hands slid over her skin just above her aching core, and the other remained behind to cup the weight of her buttock. She wanted to gasp his name breathlessly, but she couldn’t summon even that. She could only hold on to his neck and shoulders and give over to tactile sensation.

His fingers delved between her thighs, grazing the crease of her pussy with his long middle finger. She let her thighs move apart, clinging to his neck, pressing her lips to the warmth of his throat, kissing and nibbling and then giving way to gasps as his fingers slid inside her and began to explore.

He seemed to know exactly where to touch her, how to stroke her. Within seconds, she was unable to stand up on her own at all, and Stone was lowering her to the bed and kneeling over her, never slowing the slow sweep of his fingers, or the suckling of his lips on her nipple.
 

Wren bit her lip and tried to ignore the roiling of her stomach, tried gamely to focus on the raw fury of her building orgasm.

She moaned, scratching at his shoulders as he moved his mouth to her other breast. He shifted position, and she felt the hard bulge of arousal against her thigh. She lifted her hips into his touch, moving with his rhythm, seeking release from the ache. His fingers inside her accelerated and his teeth grazed the sensitive, erect nub of her nipple. She couldn’t move or think or feel anything but the blasting pulse of heat low in her belly and the tugging in her breasts as he released her hand to gently twist and flick her nipple.

And then, just as the heat and pressure became too much to bear, Stone’s fingers slid upward inside her and his thumb rolled over her throbbing clitoris and Wren came apart, crying out and clawing his back with her fingernails, pressing her lips to his throat and whimpering as the orgasm blasted through her.

She clung to Stone, shaking and quaking, heat raging in her veins, every ounce of strength within her leached away, now.
 

Wren felt herself going under, slipping beneath the surface of consciousness. She fought it, forcing her eyes open, rolling in place to face Stone, who was on his side now. His eyes were hooded, heavy-lidded, burning. Wren extended her hand, fighting the weight of her own limb, to touch his chest, tracing the outline of his pectoral muscle, the tan, hard flesh hot beneath her fingertips. His gaze raked over her, soaking up her body, then returned to meet her eyes.
 

“You’re so beautiful, especially when you come for me like that.” Stone’s voice was pitched low, barely a murmur, rumbling like distant thunder.
 

“Stone.” She carved a path down his chest, following the grooves of his cut abdominal muscles. “That was…incredible.”

“It was a start.”

“You finished me off, Stone. I can barely function.” Wren struggled with her drowsing eyelids, forcing them open. “But you…I’m not done with you.”
 

She touched the tightly rolled and tucked cotton of his towel, which he’d somehow managed to keep around his waist the entire time. The front of the white cotton was tented by his straining erection.
 

He tensed as she hooked her index finger under the towel at his waist, loosening it. “It doesn’t have to be equal, Wren. I’ll be fine.”

She shook her head floppily. “It’s not about equality. I want…this. You. More.”

His lips quirked in an amused smile. “You’re falling asleep as you talk, babe.”

“Then I should save my energy, shouldn’t I?” She smiled at him, but it was a soft, faint curve of her lips.
 

She tugged at the towel gently until the ends came apart and he was bare to the air and to her gaze. Wren couldn’t stop a surprised gasp at the size of him, but quickly recovered, closing her fingers around his silky hardness. He gasped, then, as she slid her fist down his length.
 

Wren marveled as she touched him. Stone had always seemed larger than life to her, massively muscled yet as lithe and graceful in every movement as a lion, rugged and rough-hewn. And now, naked, she could barely fathom the raw power of the man. There was no spare fat on him, no imperfections in his muscular build.
 

She slid her hand around his cock, exploring him, and each stroke of his taut skin took an absurdly long time to complete. He was watching her with hungry eyes, still, letting her touch without moving, without trying to get more from her.
 

Sliding closer to him, she tucked her head against his chest and took her time stroking him. She used her fingertips to trace his length, then her fist to squeeze his thickness, now setting a rhythm of achingly slow strokes, thumbing his tip at the apex of the stroke and twisting her hand when she reached his base. He pressed his lips against her hair and kissed, tightened his grip on her shoulders, but otherwise remained completely still. The only sign of arousal was his increasingly ragged breathing. Then, as she began to increase the pace of her hand on him, he bucked his hips, meeting her hand.
 

A groan escaped him, and then another. “Wren, I’m not going to last much longer.”

“Good,” she murmured. “Let go.”

“All over you?”

She only quickened her pace, until he was gasping and writhing. Wren watched him, gauging. She watched the tip of him leak as he pushed into her fist. Wren was aroused again, turned on just watching him grow frantic, savoring the growl that escaped him when she slowed down, and then let go of him.
 

Summoning all of her energy, forcing away everything but the need for this, for him, she slid her leg over his hips, clinging to his neck as she positioned him at her entrance.
 

“Wait, we don’t have a—”

“It’s fine. I’m on Depo.”

“But—” He tried to slow her down, but she wasn’t about to let that happen.

“I promise,” Wren said, sinking him deep inside her. She groaned low in her throat as he filled her, stretched her. “Oh my god, Stone.”

“Shit, Wren.” Stone clutched her hips and held her still as he buried himself to the hilt. “How can anything feel so perfect?”

“That’s what I was thinking.” She pressed her feverish forehead to his chest and arched her back, whimpering as he slid out and buried himself once again. He was still holding her hips so she couldn’t move, and she was growing frustrated, impatient. “Let me go. Let me move.”

Stone chuckled. “I don’t think so, babe. Just lay on me, let me do all the work.”

Wren pressed her mouth to his pectoral and gasped as he set a slow pace. “Fine, but I need more. Faster.”

Stone didn’t answer verbally, only drove into her harder, faster, holding on to the crease of her hips and pulling her against him as he thrust. Wren couldn’t figure out how he was still lasting, since he’d been on the edge when she let go of him, but he was still going, still driving her to madness. She was filled, burgeoning with need, gasping against him, moving unconsciously now, unable to stop the fluttering of her hips as she swelled closer and closer to a second climax.