Along Came Trouble: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (17 page)

“Years,” she whispered. “Three years. Thirty years. A while.”

He nestled his head against her stomach and breathed into her belly button. “That’s a shame, sweetheart. A body like this deserves to be worshipped. Someone should be making you feel sexy every single day.” He glanced up her, smiling wickedly. “I know a good man for the job.”

Kissing his way up to her breasts, he made short work of what remained of her inhibitions with his tongue and his hands and his stubble rasping over her nipples. Could you come this way, just from having a man ravish your breasts? She had never thought so before, but Caleb was making her revisit some of her assumptions. Such as the assumption she’d ever had sex before. It was starting to seem possible she’d only been playing at it.

“You’re so soft,” he murmured. “Soft and warm and welcoming. The perfect woman.”

“You’re thinking of kittens,” she said, and then gasped when he sucked her nipple into his mouth.

“What?” He did something wonderful with his tongue that made her hips lift a foot off the bed.

It took her a moment to gather up her stray thoughts and say, in an absurdly low and raspy voice, “Kittens are soft. Women are supposed to be thin and toned, with tight little butts and zeppelin boobs. Don’t you ever read magazines?”

He scooted up to look in her eyes, catching her hands and pulling them over her head. The entire hard, long, sexy length of him pressed her into the bed.

“I promise you, I’m not thinking about kittens,” he said, sliding one hand down the inside of her outstretched arm from her shoulder to her hip. “I’m thinking about how bad I want to be inside you. How hot and wet and tight and soft you’re going to be. I’m thinking about how many times I can make you come before morning, and all the different ways.”

“Oh.” Her thoughts had run away.
Oh
was the only word she had left.

“I don’t want some scrawny little magazine chick, Ellen. I want you. But you know, I’ve never been much good with words. I’m more of an action guy. So what I’m going to do is show you.”

Oh
. He started moving back down her body, tucking his hands beneath her and sliding them downward until they came to rest under her butt. He had such big, capable hands. She really couldn’t get over it. Her entire butt fit in his hands. And my, his broad shoulders did a nice job of spreading her legs apart. My oh my.

“How long since somebody did this for you?” he asked, planting a kiss high up on her inner thigh.

An eternity
. “A while.”

“Good.” His lips curved into a very satisfied, very cocky smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

But once he got started, it rapidly became clear that no one had ever done this for her. Not like Caleb did it. When his tongue stroked over the single most sensitive spot on her body the first time, she thought she might pass out from the hot shock of it. She nearly asked him to stop, because her nerve endings were exposed and humming with need, and she understood
suddenly that he would be merciless. The question of whether one could have too much of a good thing was not, in the case of Caleb, purely abstract.

It seemed unlikely she would survive.

His tongue swirled around her clit again and again, the pressure varying and keeping her off balance, swimming in sensation just this side of unbearable. A tingling pull built steadily between her legs and forced her to raise her hips toward him, to beg with her body for more, more, more. He seduced her with his tongue and his lips and even, she thought, his teeth, and she kept bringing her knees up so she could dig her heels into the bed, but they just slid down the sheet. She couldn’t find any purchase anywhere.

And then he moved two fingers inside her and located some secret spot she’d never known was there, and he held her hip in place with one big hand while she tried to squirm away from the arrival of the orgasm he’d detonated.

There was no escaping it. The pleasure hit her in one blast wave after another, forcing her surrender. Tightening her muscles and wringing them out until she relaxed into the mattress, limp as a wet rag.

And happy.
So
happy.

She honestly couldn’t remember when she’d ever felt this good, as if all of the burden she’d been carrying around had lifted and she could breathe and look about, rolling her liberated shoulders and bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet to test what freedom felt like.

She was giddy with it. One orgasm, and he’d made her giddy.

His face appeared above her, and she gazed up at him, thunderstruck. Awestruck. Starstruck. Struck dumb.

Love-struck? No. Not that. Just all the other ones.

“Whoa,” she said, and wiggled her toes to see if they were still there. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Basic training.” He said it with his soldier face on, serious and stern, and for a few seconds she actually believed him. But then he cracked a huge smile and said, “Come on, what kind of question is that?”

“You’re right, Sarge, it was very rude. I ought to be thanking you. Now I won’t have to go to my grave ignorant of what an orgasm is supposed to feel like.”

He pushed her bangs off her face. “Please tell me that wasn’t your first orgasm.” His expression was such an adorable combination of tenderness and horror, she almost laughed.

She shook her head, making her eyes as huge and wide as she could, and said with all the naiveté she could muster, “I don’t know. It seems to have given me amnesia. I can’t remember a single thing that happened to me before you blew the top of my head off.”

He grinned again and brought one hand to her thigh. “That’s a serious problem. But I can
help.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yep. What you need is to make some new memories. I’ll assist you.” He lowered his mouth to the base of her throat and began kissing his way downward.

“What about my old memories?”

“They might not be recoverable. But if there were no good orgasms in there, I figure it’s not much of a loss.”

She ran her fingers through the short bristles of his hair. It was silky and thick, and she wondered what it would look like if he grew it out. If it would curl at the base of his neck. She could see Caleb as a wiry rascal of a kid, scraped knees and mischievous eyes, hair flopping over his forehead. Exasperating and lovable.

He returned, kissed behind her ear, and she sighed, lifting her foot to trail along his calf. Where her toes discovered he was still half-dressed. “Clark, if you don’t get these pants off right now, I swear I’ll kick you out of my house.”

“Maybe I should keep them on,” he said. “They’re doing amazing things for my self-control.”

“If I go on record as being terribly impressed with your self-control, will you take the damn pants off?”

He shook his head no. “You’re going to have to do it yourself.”

It wasn’t exactly a hardship. She sat up and shoved him onto his back, then reached for his fly as he interlaced his fingers behind his head. Caleb Clark smiling up from her pillow. Enough to give a girl the vapors.

When she worked open the button and lowered his zipper, her fingers moved inside and curled around their discovery in an automatic caress. There was nothing small or modest about Caleb, that was for sure. And nothing soft, either. No, he grew harder in her grip, straining eagerly toward her. Knowing she could do this to him gave her an embarrassing amount of pleasure.

Nobody had ever filled her with such lust before. No man had ever made her want to get down on her knees and beg. Or get down on her knees and suck, for that matter. Blow jobs had never been high on her list of favorite activities, but it was going to be downright fabulous to find out what happened to Caleb’s soldier face when she put her mouth on him.

He caught her eye and apparently got a pretty good idea of what she was thinking, because he groaned. Raising himself on one elbow, he brought his mouth to her ear and bit the lobe, sending a shiver skating along her spine. “Careful, babe. My self-control might not be as impressive as you think. Show me a little mercy, huh?”

But she wasn’t feeling merciful. She hooked her thumbs through both of his waistbands
and tugged them down, down, down, sliding her fingers over his butt and the backs of his thighs until finally he was naked for her. The dusky head of his cock strained toward her, and when she stroked the softest, hardest part of him, he sucked in a gratifying breath.

She wanted him in her mouth.

She found herself on her back.

“I was going to—”

“Not now.” His eyes glittered with an animal heat that told her Caleb was done playing around.

“I had plans! You would’ve liked them.”

“Yeah. But I’m going to like this more.”

He kissed her and spread her thighs wide with his hand on her knee. “Have you got a condom?”

She looked toward the side table. “In the drawer over there.”

He followed her glance. “Is it three years old?”

“Just about.” She’d bought them within a week of kicking Richard out—not because she expected to have sex with another man anytime soon, but because preparing for the possibility was one more way to thumb her nose at him. “Expired, you think?”

Caleb chuckled. “Yes.” Moving off her, he fished around in his pants for his wallet and then returned with a prize. “I only have one. We’ll have to make it count.”

She expected him to get right down to business after that, but he took his sweet time heating her up, his hands on her breasts and stroking over the outside of her thighs, the inside of her thighs, fingers dipping between her legs, tongue tracing the shape of her collarbone and flicking her nipples and doing to her mouth what she very much wanted him to do to her body. She reached for him more than once, trying to speed him along, but he batted her hands away and counseled patience.

“What happened to fast and hard and rough?” Desperation made her edgy and possibly a little whiny.

“Mmm. We’ll do that next time. We have to get acquainted first.”

She moaned and laced her fingers behind his neck, pulling his face close so he could see how serious she was. “Clark, I know everything I need to know about you except how you feel inside me.”

Lifting her knees, she wrapped her legs around his hips and shifted until the tip of him pressed into her. “Now,” she said, wiggling in an attempt to bring him inside. “I’ll tell you anything you want to hear, anything at all, if you do it n—unh.”

He thrust and met resistance. Thrust again, slow but determined, and then withdrew and sank back inside her. This time, her body yielded, taking him so deep, so
deep
, she forgot how to
talk. She could only arch her back and close her eyes and inhale.

Everything smelled like Caleb. His soap, the scent of his sweat. They were both slick with it and breathing hard, the room stifling with the doors all closed. It was too hot to be touching, too hot even to hold hands, but she wanted every single inch of him to stay pressed against every single inch of her anyway, and she wanted to breathe him in and look at him and taste him on her tongue.

This was more than she’d bargained for.

“Okay?” he asked, brushing his lips over her chin.

Holy shit
.

“Ellen?” He kissed the space between her eyebrows.

“Yes?” She managed a breathless whisper.

“You okay?”

“I’m …” What was the word she wanted? “Sublime.”

He smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners, and said, “Yeah, you are. And sexy as hell.” He withdrew slightly, then returned, seating himself even deeper. “And beautiful.” Out, then back in. She would perish from the pleasure of having him inside her. She would expire. Any moment. “Did I say sexy yet?”

“Yes.”
Oh, God, yes
.

“It deserves to be said twice. Sexy Ellen.” Withdrew. Returned. She squeezed, and he stopped moving, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Honey, you’re going to kill me.”

He smoothed one hand over her forehead and kissed her, finding a slow, even rhythm with his hips that she did her level best to disrupt, because this was too much for her. He was too much. Too sweet, too considerate, too amazing. She hadn’t anticipated it would be this … much. She hadn’t expected this tight feeling in her chest when he looked down at her, this muzzy certainty in her bones and her skin and her fingertips that there was something
right
about this experience. Something perfect. Something alarmingly big and important.

So she closed her eyes and urged him to go faster, digging her nails into his back and letting him hear what he was doing to her with every stroke. She couldn’t linger here with him, couldn’t let him make love to her this way. She needed him selfish and wild. Unimportant. Disposable.

When he lost control, she felt it, the shudder that racked his body and the way he stopped holding back. He buried his face in her neck and his hands under her ass and spoke in her ear, a low rumble that proved he’d been lying earlier when he’d said he wasn’t much good with words. He was the whole package, driving her toward the cliff with his body, pushing her off it with that bedroom voice telling her she was beautiful, she was sexy, she was smart, she was everything he wanted.

When she came, she kept her eyes closed and her lips pressed tightly shut, because she was afraid of what she’d feel if she looked at him, and she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, she’d say his name.

Chapter Fourteen

When he’d recovered enough to be capable of coherent thought, Caleb noticed the heat first.

Ellen’s bedroom had become a greenhouse, hot and humid and smelling of sex and cinnamon. One of them needed to turn on the ceiling fan if they were ever going to have a hope of cooling off. Crack a window, get some air moving around in here.

But her hair spread out over his shoulder in damp ropes. Her hand was on his stomach, and he could see it rise and fall with every breath he took. He slid his palm down her back and over her ass, savoring the dip and curve, the way his hand fit so many different ways against her body.

Without warning, she sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the bathroom.