Wait?I couldn’t wait. I was completely and utterly insane for this girl. I put my hands on her hips, feeling the firm warmth of her, reassuring my brain that this was real, that I had her in my hands at last. Seven seconds. I could wait maybe seven seconds. “What?” I grated.
Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “Don’t stop again. Don’t push me away again. Not this time.” She shook her head, her red hair tossing. “I couldn’t take it. Okay?”
I already knew. Sometime in that cramped, steel box, the pressure that had been building up for months had finally gotten too much. It had exploded and shattered every reason I had for staying away from her: the ones that were to protect her and the ones that were to protect myself. It wasn’t a decision, anymore, it was a simple necessity. I needed her like I needed to breathe.
“Fuckin’ right,” I said with feeling. And kissed her so fast she barely had time to move her fingers out of the way.
38
LOUISE
It wasn’t likeany of the kisses we’d shared before. This was as new and fresh as the cold air rushing around us, everything I’d imagined it could be but cleaned of all the problems that had been holding us back. His lips twisted and sought and I opened, sighing into his mouth as his tongue found mine. His hands swept up my body, all the way from my hips to my neck. Then they buried themselves in my hair, sliding through the strands and stroking the nape of my neck in a way that made me gasp and arch my back.
My breasts crushed against his chest—God, just as hard and hugely broad as I’d imagined it. We were both still so hot that every contact of our bodies—every scrape of my nipples against his iron pecs, every brush of his rippled abs against my stomach—sent ripples of fire through me, soaking down to my groin. I’d tilted my head up to meet his kiss because, even with me sitting atop him, he was still taller than me. So I was panting up into his mouth when he twisted his hands, fingers pointing down my spine, and slid them all the way down the arch of my back to my ass. A long, glorious river of pleasure, like liquid gold flowing down my body, and I arched like a cat. Then his palms cupped my ass cheeks andsqueezed,fingersdigging in just a little roughly, and the pleasure turned darker, hotter—
He broke the kiss and drew back a little. My stomach lurched.Oh shit…no, no, no, don’t stop!“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice weak.
He was staring down at me with raw, unbridled lust, those cobalt-blue eyes flaring like I’d never seen them. “Not a bloody thing,” he growled. “Just lookin’ at you.”
He’d looked at me that way plenty of times and it had made me squirm every single time. But I’d never been straddling him before. Now, as his gaze licked down my body, it made me subtly twist and flex against the hard bulge beneath his jockey shorts. I felt him tense at the feeling and I laid my palms on his pecs to feel him better. Immediately, I went weak: the size of him, the sheer power of him, heart booming so hard I could feel my hand trembling, every muscle primed and ready. I looked down at the point where our nearly-naked bodies were pressed together, his tanned hips between my pale ones, and caught my breath. The two of us were bound together in a feedback loop: the more he looked at me, the more I moved; the more I moved and ground against him, the more his eyes narrowed in lust.
“You’ve got no idea, have you?” he growled. “You’ve got no idea how much I want you.” The Irish in his accent made the words into rich amber liquor that poured straight into my brain and left me reeling…then spread out through my body as eager, nervous heat. I flushed and looked away for a second because part of me couldn’t believe he was wantingme:the botany geek, the “mom.”
In response, he pushed closer to me, putting his mouth to my ear. That meant that I could feel the vibration of every word through our chests as he spoke. “You drive me fucking insane, Louise. You always have.”
I drew in a shuddering breath and he groaned in response as my breasts pressed harder against his chest. His voice was low and iron-hard, now, barely-restrained, the rumble of thunder seconds before the storm. “Your face. This hair. These breasts.” He ran his palms up between us and cupped them, making me gasp, then worked outwardand down to my sides. “These gorgeous fucking curves. This arse.” He slapped it and I jerked. Then he was kissing me again, a long, deep plundering of my mouth that left me breathless. He drew my lower lip into his mouth, sucking on it for a second, and I writhed, crackling pleasure lashing down within me and whipping the building heat to spin faster and faster.
When he spoke again, his voice was lower still. His accent turned the words into dark, silver-flecked smoke that twisted down inside me from my ear straight to my groin. “You don’t want me to stop? I’m not going to. Not this time. I’m going to fuck you like I should have done the very first time I met you.” He ran one big hand up my side and caressed my neck and jaw, the pad of his thumb rubbing over my cheek. “Is that what you want?”
When I answered I barely recognized my own voice. “Yes. God, yes!”
The need in my voice must have taken him over the edge because he suddenly snarled. He lay back, pulling me down on top of him, and then rolled us so he was on top. Then he stood, scooping me up with one thick forearm under my shoulders and the other under my ass, lifting me off the floor as if I was made of air. As he came up to standing, the bulge of his cock rubbed the full length of the lips of my sex. My hands grabbed for his shoulders and found them, helplessly squeezing at the hard muscles in response.
He walked us over to the nearest table, every step making him rub and twist against me. I closed my eyes and clamped my legs around him, delighting in the solid breadth of him between my legs: I was a vine clinging to a rock face.
Then the warm wood of the tabletop was under my ass. He sat me down on the very edge and then stepped back to look at me. I slowly opened my eyes and looked up at him to see what was next.
“Jesus,” he said slowly. He brushed his thumb across my cheek again. “So innocent.” He was looking at me the way an artist would look at a virgin canvas, as if he couldn’t believe how many possibilities there were.
I didn’tfeelvery innocent, sitting there almost naked on the edge of the table, legs spread and a man between my knees. But then, as I looked up at him...suddenly, I did.
I’d gotten to know him. I’d even glimpsed beyond the outer shell he showed to everyone else. But that didn’t change who hewas.Now that he wasn’t holding back anymore, I could feel that aura of darkness: he was raw and dangerous and completely outside any rules.
I wasn’t innocent. But I was pure as the driven snow next to him. And that only made me want him more. I was like a bound, sacrificial maiden being offered up to a beast, unable to do anything more than gaze hypnotized at her approaching fate. I looked up at him with hooded eyes, marveling at the size of him: the hard-packed bulk of his shoulders, the broad, hard chest, the solid hips and tight waist that would let him pound a woman for hours—
Jesus.Poundmefor hours.
“I want to know how you sound when you scream my name,” he said. “I want to know how hard you claw at my back, when I’m holding you right on the edge. I want to know whether you come harder with me on top, or behind you. But you know what I need to know most of all?”
Having him say it all to me withthataccent was like being wrapped in iron chain dipped in silver. I couldn’t move, couldn’t close my thighs, even if I’d wanted to. I dazedly shook my head.
“I need to know what you look like,” he told me. “Here.” One hand hooked into the front of my panties—
I realized what he was going to do just as he did it. There was a crack and snap of elastic and the renting of wet cloth, and then the remains of my panties were in his hand and the cool air from the air conditioning was caressing my sopping folds.
Now Ididtry to close my legs: just an instinctive reaction. But his muscled thighs were between my knees, as immovable as stone. And I felt his eyes scald their way down my body to my groin.
We looked down together at the soft pink lips and the curling copper hair above them. I could actuallyfeelhis reaction, his wholebody stiffening with excitement. The thought that he’d been thinking about that one part of me, fantasizing about it, all this time, was hot as hell.
