Along Came Trouble: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (16 page)

“I want you, Ellen.” His hands slid up her bare back to cup the delicate wings of her shoulder blades and draw her closer, while his mouth found a path that led north from her belly button. “So bad.”

He should have said something different, something more considerate of her feelings or his honor. Told her he wasn’t the kind of person who’d use sex to manipulate a woman. But all he could think about was getting his hands and his mouth on more of her skin, which made it hard to see the point.

“Show me,” she whispered.

“Don’t you think we’d better slow this down?” He lifted her shirt a little higher and kissed the underside of her breasts, his own answer to the question. As he straightened to standing, his hands moved to the caps of her shoulders, and when she lifted her arms, he started pulling the shirt off over her head. “I was hoping to ask you—”

But then he got a good look at her, her breasts full and lush, nipples bunched. Her damp hair spread out over her shoulders and plastered against her neck. Whatever he’d been about to say evaporated, and he kissed her so hard their teeth collided. She did something with her breath, a happy exhale that was like a laugh, fanning out over his face. Caleb cupped her head in his hands, held her still, and went after her with no finesse and no control whatsoever.

The kiss was pure, distilled sex. Greedy. Hungry. When he slid his tongue into her mouth, she met it, a slick, explicit welcome that tasted like the best kind of homecoming, sweet and spicy as the cinnamon in her hair. Softer than he’d even hoped, her breasts, her stomach pliant and sweet pressing up against him. Her hands on his shoulders. On his neck. Slipping over his biceps.

He moved a leg between her thighs. His hands found her ass, fingers toying with the hem of her ridiculous shorts and his palms full of denim.

His dick made impatient demands.
Take her on the couch. Take her against that wall. Take her on the fucking floor, just get those clothes off her and get inside her NOW
.

Greedy bastard
. Caleb backed off, needing to breathe and slow the hell down, but Ellen made a mewling noise and pulled his head back to hers. She kissed him this time, bit his lip, just as aggressive as he’d been. The small amount of blood he needed to operate his brain got reassigned to the raging hard-on pressing against her hip.

He gave up and let his hands roam over every part of her they could reach. She was perfect. Everything about her. Perfect.

Still gripping his head, Ellen pushed him away and looked him in the eye. “Right now, Caleb. No messing around. I want you inside me, taking me so hard I can’t see straight, and if you don’t—”

He covered her mouth with his palm to shut her up. “I will. Jesus. Hold that thought.”

Leaving her there, he crossed to the back of the room, where he closed and locked the French doors. He passed swiftly into the kitchen and closed and locked the side door. Back through to the entryway. She hadn’t moved. He closed and locked the front door.

He was as capable of resisting temptation as the next guy. Maybe more so. But this wasn’t temptation. This was
Ellen
, talking dirty and begging him to have sex with her, and how could anyone resist that? No man could. He sure as hell couldn’t.

Straight down the hall to her bedroom, he lowered the damn blinds.

And then he went back to the living room, hauled her into his arms, and kissed her again.
Slower this time. Thoroughly. If he was going to have her—and he was—he’d do it properly.

Smooth, silky skin. Warm, willing woman. She moaned encouragement, sliding her tongue into his mouth and sending a jolt of lust straight to his cock that felt like pure joy.

“Bed,” he said after a minute. “The floor would be a crime.”

“That way.” She pointed over his shoulder.

Fastest way to get there was to carry her. He lifted her by the hips and kissed her again as she wrapped her legs around him. They bumped hard into the wall in the hallway when she ground against his cock with a breathy little moan. He toed off his shoes on her bedroom carpet and kneeled on the wine-red comforter with Ellen plastered to his chest, her face tipped back to kiss him.

They fell onto the mattress together, a graceless dead weight, though he managed to get his elbows under him so he didn’t crush her.

This wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing, but it felt right. Ellen felt right. Sometimes, that was all you had to go by. Caleb stared down at her, her face shadowed in the dim room, her eyes liquid and luminous, and made his peace with it.

She tugged his shirt out of his slacks. “Get this off.”

“That sounded suspiciously like an order.”

She tipped her hips up, rubbing hard against him and making a low, needy noise in her throat that pretty much did him in. Her nipples brushed against his chest through his shirt, and he had to taste them. To watch her move, naked, underneath him.

It was possible she’d come to her senses later and hate him for this. It was even possible he’d get fired for it. Unlikely, but possible.

It didn’t matter. Only a very stupid man would turn down what she was offering him, and he was not very stupid. Out of his head with lust, yeah, and maybe only moderately intelligent on a good day, but not altogether stupid.

He had enough brain cells left to unbutton a shirt.

As he sat up, still straddling her, she smiled her show-stopping smile and asked, “So you still take orders?”

“From you, apparently I do.” He leaned way out and fumbled with her bedside lamp until he found the switch. Light spilled over her hair, which spilled over her pillow.
Gorgeous
.

“Did they call you ‘Sarge,’ like on TV?”

That she knew his rank made him smile. She must have asked Carly. “They say it more like ‘Sar’nt.’ ”

“And if I order you to make it fast, and hard, and rough, Sergeant Clark …?”

She slid her hands up underneath his shirttail to splay across his stomach. With a shudder, he closed his eyes and fought to tamp down his response. She was so provocative, so freaking
hot, but there was an innocence to her, too. He wanted to fuck her silly and shelter her at the same time.

Probably better pick one
.

“Is that how you like it?” he asked, though he fully intended to find out for himself. He was going to figure out everything Ellen liked, and then he was going to do it to her as many times as possible. “You want me rough?”

Something flickered in her eyes then, so unexpected and gone so fast he nearly missed it. But he couldn’t miss it. He knew what fear looked like. He’d seen every variety of fear. Felt most of them, too.

“Hey,” he said, capturing her wrists underneath his shirt. He removed her hands and rolled off to one side, interlacing their fingers. “Hey, Ellen. Look at me.”

She didn’t seem to want to, but eventually she met his eyes. “You afraid of me?” he asked.

“No.” And she meant it, he could tell. But she was worried about something. She’d gone too quiet, too enclosed all of a sudden, where before she’d been brash and playful.

“I was just teasing, you know. I would never hurt you, or do anything you didn’t want me to do. Never.” He traced the outline of her face with one finger. “I promise.”

She nodded, accepting his statement. “I know that.”

“You want me to leave?” He didn’t know what else to say. In his mind, he was already walking out of the room, already trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Other than the obvious—that he was bigger and stronger than her, and damn near a stranger. Of course she was having second thoughts. He was an ass.

She shook her head and said, “I want you to take off that shirt.”

Not the answer he’d expected. And he couldn’t have kept the slow smile from spreading over his face if he’d tried.

He kissed her, softer this time. Testing the waters. “You’re sure?”

Her mouth opened, her tongue accepting his. They kissed for a long time, and whatever tension had gripped her let go. Their bodies nudged closer together, his thigh parting her legs and her hand finding his hip to tug him closer. He memorized the weight of her breast with his free hand, the way her breath caught when he thumbed her nipple.

“I’m sure,” she said against his lips.

He believed her.

Unbuttoning a shirt one-handed wasn’t easy, but he could take an M9 apart, clean it, and put it back together blindfolded. He had talented fingers—always had. And he didn’t want to let go of her hand yet.

He rolled onto his back, sat up, and shrugged out of the shirt, releasing her grip for a
second so he could pull the sleeve off and toss the whole thing on the floor. When he looked over at her again, she was staring at his torso and breathing through her mouth, her eyes unfocused.

Maybe there had been a point to all those sit-ups and push-ups and ten-mile runs at five a.m. after all.

“Want me to take off anything else?”

She blinked. Shook her head sharply once as if to clear it. Blinked again. And smiled.

Something about that smile knocked him flat. This woman. He couldn’t wrap his head around it, but he felt it just the same. This woman was his. She was for him, in a way no other woman had ever been. She cut the legs out from under him.

He wanted her, and he was going to have her, and he was going to keep her.

“Take it all off, soldier.” Her smile turned sassy. “Make it snappy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and kissed her again.

Chapter Thirteen

Oh, man, Caleb could kiss. He could really, really kiss. He could kiss like kissing was the only thing on his agenda, and honestly, if you could kiss like this, why put anything else in the day planner? She’d be happy to lie here kissing Caleb for the next twelve to twenty-four hours.

Well, mostly happy. A number of her erogenous zones were clamoring for a greater share of his attention. Her breasts were tight and tingling, and some sort of nuclear meltdown had occurred between her legs, because everything down there was wet and hot and swollen and needy. Very needy.

But for the moment, kissing was grand. His kiss was wet, but not too wet. It was hot but controlled, passion banked in favor of a slow exploration of her mouth with his tongue. He was tasting her, testing her, investigating her. He was teasing her. Arousing her. Claiming her.

How anyone could do all that with one kiss, she didn’t know. She didn’t really care, either. Though it did make a girl wonder what he could do with the rest of his fine self if he ever got around to undressing.

“Clark,” she said between kisses. “For God’s sake, get your pants off.”

He smiled, teeth bright in the dim room. “In a minute.”

“Then get
my
pants off.”

That smirk. “Those are not pants. They’re barely even shorts.”

He took them off, though. Took off her panties, too, with an appreciative languor that made her squirmy with lust. But also, unfortunately, rather nervous, because she hadn’t given a lot of thought to how exposed she’d be in this whole scenario. How much he’d see.

Caleb dipped his tongue into her navel, running his big, warm hands up the sides of her body to spread over her rib cage.
Delicious. Incredible
. Unfortunately, a loudspeaker in her head wouldn’t stop reminding her she had a pasty white post-baby stomach, and it was totally unfit for this kind of thing.

“Don’t do that,” she whispered. The request might have been more effective if she hadn’t been running restless fingers over his shoulders and basically holding him in place.

He licked a path upward toward her breasts. “Why not?”

“It’s not … That’s not my best area,” she said, wincing internally at how lame that sounded, and how hopelessly out of her league she was with this guy. She’d nearly passed out when he took his shirt off. He was about fourteen acres of sculpted male perfection, taut and toned, exactly the right amount of muscular to tell you he could get the job done—any job—but
not so much to make you fear he spent his spare time in a weight room pumping iron and watching his muscles glisten in the mirror.

And she was a mom. With a mom belly.

She’d been trying to brazen it out, playing the bold, sensual seductress he made her feel like, but she was skating a pretty fine line here between lust on the one side and incredulity on the other. And fear. Yeah, there was a little fear, too. He’d seen it, called her on it, and she’d nearly botched the whole thing.

But he’d assumed she was afraid of him, and that wasn’t it at all. She felt 100 percent safe with Caleb. Her body, anyway. No doubt he’d broken some hearts, and he would break hers if she let him. She wouldn’t let him. She’d already made up her mind—her heart was staying out of this.

What she was afraid of was the inevitable moment when she would disappoint him. She wasn’t experienced enough to play with a guy like Caleb. Not young enough or tight enough anywhere. He could bounce quarters off his abs. He’d be used to women who did body shots and owned fur-lined handcuffs and had lingerie rather than underpants.

Caleb moved back a few inches and appraised her, lightly running his fingers down the center of her stomach, then over to the sides and back up. He met her eyes. “You have no idea how hot you are.”

It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t have to say anything. Which was good, because she couldn’t imagine what to say.
Thank you for that very kind, very flattering lie?

He planted his hands on either side of her face and gazed down at her, serious and devastatingly handsome. “When was the last time someone made you feel sexy, Ellen?”

“Ah …” Nothing came to mind. Certainly, no one had ever made her feel the way he was making her feel right now, with his hot, hungry eyes focusing all his attention on her. “It’s been a while.”

His eyes narrowed, and she wondered idly whether he’d been a sniper. The man had a way of putting you in his sights. “How long’s a while?”

She didn’t answer him, so he kissed her. He kissed her lips, her throat, her stomach. He kissed the palm of her hand. She got a little floaty and delirious with the pleasure of it and forgot they were having a conversation, so it came as a surprise when he asked her again. “How long’s a while?”