Ambassador Pearce would be released tomorrow and in the meantime was lightly sedated. Sam had told her to go home, Harry and Mike had told her to go home, the hospital staff had told her to go home, but it wasn’t until her father passed a shaking hand over her hair and told her to go rest that she even considered it. Even then, Sam had had to pry her away.
She’d fallenstraight asleep in the car and he’d carried her up to his apartment, undressed her carefully, given her one of his tee shirts and put her between the sheets.
She’d come half awake as he undressed her, looking at him, then at the blue-steeler in his pants. But he kept it zipped. Nicole’s beautiful eyes were bruised with fatigue and she was paper white.
Though his body had been raring to go, he’d rather have slit his own throat than expect sex when she was so exhausted. He’d fixed her a big cup of hot milk with lots of honey and a jigger of whiskey and after he’d made sure she drank it all, she’d turned on her side and gone out like a light.
He sat all night in a chair by the bed, holding her hand, simply watching her in the quiet stillness. Toward morning, he stripped and slowly eased himself into the bed.
Moving carefully, he spooned himself around her, one arm under her head, the other curled around her belly. The more of her he touched, the happier he was. Touching her—touching the warm, living flesh of her—was vital to his sanity.
He’d almost lost her, there in that abandoned warehouse.
Lost, as in dead. As in dead forever.
He could barely think about it without shuddering. To his dying day, he would see her, trying to leap to intercept a bullet, yanked back by the hair by a scumbag getting ready to blow a hole through her head.
If Sam closed his eyes, he could see the alternate reality, if he and Mike had come even a second later. Nicole, crumpled on the filthy floor in a pool of her own blood, all that beauty and grace and goodness—gone forever.
Jesus.
His hands tightened convulsively at the thought and that was when she turned to smile sleepily at him.
Oh shit. He clenched his jaw. “I woke you up. Sorry.”
She turned completely around, rustling the sheets, until they were front to front. Her breasts against his chest, belly against his, long legs brushing his. He jerked when she brushed against his super-sensitized dick.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. He was trying to be good, here. Trying to be considerate. But how the fuck was he supposed to dothatwhen he had Nicole Pearce in his arms, looking up at him with a half smile, so beautiful it hurt the eyes?
How the fuck was he supposed to respect her tiredness when he could smell the perfume of her skin, when she was like a little furnace all along his front? And how about when she breathed and her breasts brushed against him? How about that?
“Mmm…” Nicole smiled, eyes closed, and rubbed herself against him, head to toe. Her mound was rubbing right against his hard-on and he shuddered.
He went commando in bed, had never liked pajamas. And Nicole was only wearing one of his tee shirts. It covered her down to her knees, but the material was so soft, Sam could feel every inch of her as if she were naked.
Nicole slid a slender arm around his torso, hand clinging to his back, and buried her face in his neck. When her tongue snaked out and licked him, he thoughtthe hell with this.
A minute later, his ripped tee shirt was fluttering to the floor and he was rolling onto her, burying himself deep inside her, held tight in her soft, wet clasp.
He closed his eyes in despair. Did it again.
“Shit,” he whispered. Sam levered himself up on his elbows and looked down at her. “I forgot foreplay. Again.”
Nicole lifted her head and kissed him. “I was having an erotic dream about you.” She lifted her hips and he slid even more deeply into her. She was slick, wet, thank you, Aphrodite. “I think that might count as foreplay.”
“Oh yeah?” Intrigued, Sam pulled slowly out, pressed back into her, watching intently as her eyelids fluttered. “What were we doing? How sexy was it?”
“Off the scale,” she assured him softly. “We were in your bed and you took off my nightgown…actually you ripped it off. And it wasn’t my nightgown, it was your tee shirt and…”
He stopped her mouth with a kiss, feeling her smile underneath it. He was moving so slowly, like the waves of the sea. Cupping her shoulders, he slid back into her, deep. As deep as he could go. Her smile had gone, her kisses now felt urgent. Mouths connecting like their sexes.
Nicole’s legs lifted, widened and she somehow impaled herself even more on his dick.
An electric charge raced down his spine and his balls tightened. Not good. He had to stop this, stop coming the instant he entered her. Of course, afterward he just kept on, but he had to learn a little bit of self-control around her and try not to come in the first five strokes.
Still, the urge to torture himself was strong. Sam lifted himself on his forearms, so he could watch them as he moved inside her, oh-so slowly.
“Nice dream.” He had to work to keep from panting. “I had one too. In this one, I’m fu—we’re making love, and we’re in my bed. And we’re watching me enter you.”
