He didn’t give her time to answer that thoroughly wicked comment, instead catching her mouth in a kiss so drugging it left her dazed and confused, unable to concentrate on anything other than the terrible ache between her thighs and the friction he was providing that just…wasn’t…quite…enough.
She needed bare flesh on bare flesh. She needed fingers and tongues and lips and teeth and…his cock.Holy hell,she needed his cock. The hard column of flesh that pressed insistently against her, the steely rod of pleasure that promised so much more to come.
Put yourself inside me now!she wanted to scream. But all she managed was “Bran, I want…”
“What?” he said against her mouth, nibbling on her top lip. He sucked the sensitive pad between his teeth and laved it with his hot tongue as if demonstrating how he would suck and lick other parts of her. “What’d’ya want, Maddy? Tell me.”
“Should we go to the ranger’s station first?” she asked even though she dreaded the time it would take to walk there. Time when his hand wouldn’t be kneading her ass and working her over his throbbing hardness. Time when his skilled mouth wouldn’t be showing her the wonderful world of kissing without limits or reticence.
“No time for that,” he said.
Great minds…
“But, where—” That’s all she managed before he dropped her leg and pushed out of her arms. Her body ached with the loss. Her womanhood throbbed for friction that was no longer there. And she was so dizzy she had to thrust out a hand to steady herself against the metal skin of the lighthouse.
Bran leaned around the lighthouse and yelled, “Girls! Rick! Eyes on the entire perimeter for a while, okay? If you see anything, and I meananything, yell at the top of your lungs! I gotta duck into the lighthouse for a bit and take care of something!”
Maddy didn’t hear Rick respond—I gotta take care of somethin’? Really? Does Bran think he’s foolin’ anyone with that?—but she should’ve known the girls wouldn’t stay quiet. Which was why she just shook her head and waved off Bran’s curious look when Donna hollered, “Yo, Miss Maddy! Way to go!”
Later, she might blush at the thought that Rick and the girls knewshewas the “something” Bran had to take care of. But right now, she had to concentrate to keep up when Bran grabbed her hand and led her along the base of the lighthouse. She made it three steps, three wobbly steps before her traitorous knees gave out on her.
Weightlessness.
That’s what she experienced when Bran scooped her into his arms. She barely had time to marvel at his strength, at the easy way he carried her despite his injured leg and the fact that she was a far cry from a size two, before he bent to move the weapons from the spot atop the sleeping bag. Carefully propping them against the wall of the lighthouse, butts down, barrels up, he retrieved the sleeping bag, shook it out, and reached for the handle to the door. When he yanked it open, it made a deep groaning noise, its hinges rusty and tight from years battling the salty sea air.
This is it,she thought.This is the place.
The place where she’dfinallyknow him. All of him. Know what made him gasp, what made him moan.
She squinted against the dimness to see the interior of the lighthouse was nothing more than a circular room with an uneven wood floor. It was empty of everything but a metal ladder that led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling, behind which she assumed was the light fixture and all the mechanical whatnot. A gentlewhirringdrifted down from above. It grew louder when Bran kicked the door closed and they were engulfed in warm, humid darkness.
It wasn’t a featherbed with silk sheets. It wasn’t a hot tub with fragrant bubbles. But it was theirs. Their little hideaway. Their refuge from the world outside and any second thoughts about the repercussions of their decision. In a word, it wasperfect.A place without place. A time without time.
“Maddy,” he whispered, slowly lowering her to the ground so that she was aware of every inch of him on the descent. The heavy muscles in his chest. The impossible hardness of his stomach. The thick length of him unabashedly throbbing and flexing against her.
Her world condensed down to this room. To the two of them. Right here. Right now. Nothing else mattered. Nothing but this man who was broken and bitter. Who was equally fearless and funny. Who could promise her nothing, but who meant everything.
“Say it again,” she whispered, her voice echoing softly in the dark when her feet hit the floor. “I like it when you say my name too.”
His Jersey accent did something wonderful to it. Making it harder sounding. Tougher sounding.Eroticsounding. When he saidMaddy, she wasn’t a silly Southern belle. She was a temptress, a seductress, a siren.
“Maddy,” he said huskily, and she groaned, feeling passion fill her until it pushed against her ribs, her backbone, until her whole being ached with the enormity of it.
Then he was gone. Just like that. Her hands grasped at the darkness but came away empty. Her flesh chilled upon the absence of his intense heat. Then she heard the sleeping bagshushwhen it hit the wood floor. And suddenly he was back, herding her backward, using his big body and his superior strength to pin her against the wall. The metal was cool at her back as he reclaimed her lips in a kiss so lazy and long and thorough that by the time he allowed her to come up for air, she’d forgotten how to breathe.
“I wanna make this about you,” he said, leaving a string of kisses across her cheek and back to her ear. “Tell me what you want, Maddy. Tell me how you wanna be touched. How you wanna be kissed. How you wanna be fucked.”
With her eyesight gone, all her other senses were enhanced. For the first time she could hear the subtler bass notes in his sexy baritone, smell the lighter scent of suntan lotion underneath the salt water and Irish Spring soap clinging to his flesh, and taste the lingering flavor of a sports drink beneath the natural sweetness of his breath.
“Tell me all your fantasies, Maddy,” he continued, pressing his forehead to hers and running one finger down her cheek and over to her mouth so he could feel her swollen, parted lips. Feel her words when she finally gave them to him. “Tell me so I can make ’em all come true.”
“Bran,” she moaned. He shuddered when her breath feathered over his finger, like it’d burned him, but the pain was so good. The temptation to suck the digit inside her mouth, to take a part of him inside her, was too much. So she did exactly that and was rewarded when his uninjured thigh thrust between her legs, pushing high, lifting her on tiptoe. She rubbed herself against him even as she sucked.
“You’re so damned sexy,” he whispered before replacing his finger with his tongue, spearing deep over and over again. “Tell me, Maddy,” he insisted again. She was so wet she had to have soaked through her shorts and into his. “Tell me, damnit,” he growled when she didn’t answer him. He nipped her bottom lip. A warning. A gentle reminder that, when it came to this, he made all the rules.
“S-suck on my pulse point,” she stuttered.
He immediately obeyed, his hot lips closing over the spot on her neck where her heart hammered close to the surface of her skin. His hot tongue laved sweetly before he sucked deeply. And it was like an invisible string was connected from that spot on her neck to the swollen bundle of nerves between her legs.
