Explosive (11 page)

His brow wrinkled as he studied her intently. “It’s okay. You’ll say it when you’re ready,” he said after a moment. He stood, making Sophie shiver as his body ran against her naked skin. The feeling of his cock pressing against his pants and her lower belly made her desire burn on her tongue. She strained up to meet his descending mouth. She suspected his kiss was meant to reassure her, but instead, Sophie found herself melting beneath his firm mouth. He seemed to be asking her a question with that kiss. Her mind might not have known the answer, but her body did.

“Lie back on the bed, Sophie,” he whispered next to her lips a moment later.

She climbed onto the bed, eager for the sensation of his naked skin sliding against her own, hungry to feel his weight on top of her. He stood next to the bed, watching her as she settled back onto the pillows.

“Now spread your legs.”

She parted her thighs, her breath starting to come quicker. He crawled onto the bed. Sophie was disappointed that he didn’t remove his pants, but she was too mesmerized by the expression on his handsome face as he stared at her pussy to complain. Her clit twanged with renewed arousal, as though he’d touched her instead of looked.

It felt too intense when he lowered over her. She started to close her thighs, overwhelmed by his palpable stare. But he placed his hands on her, blocking the motion . . . keeping her open to him. He leaned down until his mouth was just an inch away from her outer sex.

“Shhhh,” he soothed. A shudder went through her at the sensation of his breath on her sensitive lips. Her muscles grew tight with anticipation.

“Thomas,” she groaned. She watched as his head lowered. She cried out when he swiped his tongue between her labia, parting the folds firmly, seeking out her secret flesh. He teased her clit with the tip, making her squirm in pleasure. He laughed softly and spread a big hand over her hip, pressing her down onto the mattress, immobilizing her.

Then he parted her with two fingers and began to eat her in earnest. A low, incredulous keen vibrated her throat. It felt decadent . . . delicious to lie there while he made love to her in such a concentrated, precise manner. His tongue was a sleek, firm master, pressing against her clit, vibrating it, agitating the helpless flesh until a scream erupted out of her lungs. She tingled. She burned.

She hurt, but God, was it a sweet pain.

When the pleasure became too intense, she tried to get away from him. But he put both hands on her hips now, keeping her captive for his torturing tongue and agile lips. He lifted her hips slightly, altering the angle of his mouth on her. He turned his head and suckled her gently, his tongue demanding its due all the while.

Orgasm crashed into her with the force of a tsunami. She clenched her eyelids and teeth. Her fingers formed claws as she gripped the bedspread, needing to hold on to something as pure bliss blazed through her body.

A moment later, she gasped for air as her eyelids blinked open. Her eyes went wide. Thomas leaned over her on his hands and knees. He looked magnificent with his hair bracketing his gleaming eyes and his defined muscles tight with desire as he held himself off her.

“Tell me what you want, Sophie. I’m going to give it to you anyway, but I’d love to hear it coming out of those sweet lips. Tell me,” he coaxed raggedly.

Sophie swallowed as her gaze traveled down his body. “I want your cock. Inside me.”

“That’s right,” he whispered. He reached in his back pocket, taking out his wallet, searching for a condom. He tossed the leather wallet aside carelessly.

He tore at the fastenings of his pants and lowered his white boxer briefs to his thighs. His cock sprung free of the material. It looked a little intimidating, aroused as he was—tumescent and flushed with blood. He rolled the condom over the tapered, succulent cock head, his movements hurried but efficient.

She watched, mesmerized. His motions at that moment called powerfully to mind last night, when he’d done very much the same thing the first time they’d had sex. He paused when he glanced up at her.

“Sophie?” he asked uncertainly.

Her breath froze in her lungs, when she saw the sudden confusion on his face. Two tense seconds seemed to stretch into an eternal moment.

“
Tom
?” she whispered incredulously . . . hopefully. Had that been recognition she’d seen flicker in his eyes? Had he remembered? But then the moment passed . . .

“You’re not afraid of me, are you, Sophie?”

She rolled her head on the pillow and mouthed
no.

He finished putting on the condom. He lowered over her, his cock held in one hand. She moaned when he pressed his mouth to her neck at the same time that he nudged her slit with his cock.

“Good. Because it isn’t like we haven’t done this before,” he muttered as he braced himself on one elbow and thrust. Sophie inhaled sharply as he slid into her vagina several inches.

“I know that. I know,” she mumbled. He flexed his hips and pressed into her deeper. He groaned gutturally.

Both of them gasped when he slid into her to the hilt.

“God, you feel so damn good,” he said.

Their bellies lay flush, expanding and contracting against the other’s as they panted for air. Sophie gritted her teeth in agonized pleasure as her body stretched to accommodate him. He was so big. It felt as if he filled up every empty space in her.

“I want to make it last,” he said. “But you do something to me, Sophie ...”

“Take me fast, then. Just
take me
, Thomas.” The words popped out of her throat in a pressurized hiss.

He grunted and began to move.
The man knew how to fuck,
Sophie thought dazedly as she watched him and the nerves in her sex fired madly beneath his stroking cock. She’d never thought about a man’s skill in moving inside a woman: for her, intercourse always shared the same basic mechanics.

But Thomas turned it into an art form. His lean hips and muscular ass and thighs orchestrated the movements of his cock into an intense sexual symphony. He didn’t just piston his cock in and out of her, he shifted his hips ever so slightly, massaging her with the most intimate strokes, firing this piece of nerve-packed flesh just so, kissing her deep with the thick rim below his cock head.

Sophie just stared up at him, her mouth hanging open . . . made speechless as he rocked her in a cradle of pleasure. He paused with his cock fully submerged in her and leaned down to suckle the tip of her left breast. She whimpered and tightened around him. His cock lurched at her instinctive caress.

He lifted his head, and Sophie saw his anguished expression. Or was it anger she saw etched on his face?

“I want to savor you, but I can’t. I
can’t.
” Sophie inhaled sharply when he pumped his hips, fucking her with short, shallow, forceful strokes. He pinned her with his stare as their bodies smacked together and the flames he’d been carefully building in their flesh surged into a flash fire. He pushed at her thighs, rolling her hips until her ass came off the bed. He spread her legs until they splayed wide in the air. When he thrust, he grimaced at the new angle.

“Aww, yeah,” he grated out.

Sophie cried out as her pleasure swelled. He closed his eyes and fucked her until the bed rattled beneath them and the headboard smacked rhythmically against the wall. Her world quaked around her, yet all she could consider was the need for release from this glorious tension. Her entire focus narrowed to the beautiful, primal male who possessed her so thoroughly.

She moaned in wild arousal and anguished need. His eyelids cracked open at the sound. His face, chest, and abdomen were slicked with sweat from the exertion of his hard ride.

“I’m going to come in your sweet pussy,” he muttered thickly.

“
Yes
,” she agreed, straining for her own orgasm, meeting his forceful thrusts with her own pumping hips, matching him stroke for stroke.

He opened his hand over her buttock and greedily molded the flesh to his palm, using his hold to increase the friction of his driving cock. “I want you to come with me.”

I want that, too
, Sophie thought wildly as she reached for it, strained for her release.

He lifted his hand and slapped her ass once, then twice. “
Come,”
he ordered tautly.

Sophie opened her eyes in shock as her body instinctively followed his order. Orgasm crashed into her. She had a flashing vision of Thomas’s face—tight, wild, and determined—before he drove deep. She felt him swell and jerk inside of her, the sensation causing a fresh wave of climax to surge through her. He gave a sharp yell and grimaced in pleasure. She felt his cock twitch as he came and his shout segued to a low, primal growl as he flexed his hips and fucked her while he exploded into the condom. Sophie grabbed onto his shoulders while they weathered the storm.

Slowly, she felt the tension leave the rock-hard muscles she clutched in her hands. His pumping hips stilled. He held himself off her with his arms, his chin falling forward to touch his chest.

Their heavy, ragged breath twined in the still room. Sophie became aware by degrees that a soft rain pattered on the window-pane. Without thinking about what she was doing, she placed her palm on Thomas’s chest, wanting to feel his heartbeat, wondering if it raced just as madly as hers did.

He looked up slowly, his bangs casting his eyes in shadow. His nostrils flared slightly when he glanced down at her breasts.

“I feel like there’s a bomb ticking inside me.”

She reached and pushed his hair off his damp brow.

“Maybe it would help if you talked about it. You need to try to put it into words, Thomas,” she whispered.

She sucked air into her lungs when he suddenly withdrew. His grimace told her the abrupt separation hadn’t been pleasant for him, either. He came down next to her on the bed.

“Talking isn’t going to bring Rick and Abel back. No amount of ‘processing’ can bring a person back to life,” he stated starkly when his head hit the pillow. “I warned you to stay clear of me, Sophie.”

His voice had gone so quiet, she barely heard the last.

“Do you
want
to leave, Thomas?”

He lifted his head and looked at her before he sagged back on the pillow. “I don’t. I want to be here for some reason. At least for a few days . . . or for however long you can put up with me.”

“I asked you to come here for some peace and quiet while you try to come to terms with things, Thomas. I haven’t changed my mind.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment as they listened to the rain falling. Thomas stared up at the ceiling. Sophie wondered if he thought of what had occurred that evening: the FBI agents calling upon Thomas, their heated lovemaking in her office . . . the frightening explosion at the warehouse.

How was he making sense of it all?

“Sophie?” he asked gruffly after a moment.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you don’t know anything about that explosion?”

“I know I’m still freaked out about it.” He turned his head and gave her a searching look. “I know as much as you know about that explosion, Thomas.”

“How did you know to warn me? From going inside Mannero’s warehouse?”

“I told you, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was just worried about you. Your behavior has alarmed me.”

“And you genuinely believe that asking me to Haven Lake,” he paused and she felt his stare all the way down to her navel, “is going to
help
?”

Sophie inhaled slowly. She, more than most, knew the power of placebo. She met his gaze unflinchingly.

“
Yes
.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

The ringing phone didn’t disturb his wife’s sleep. It didn’t surprise him. He’d seen her take the sleeping pill her doctor had prescribed her last week and had already learned of the medication’s profound effect on her.

He, on the other hand, had barely slept in days. On one or two occasions, he’d been tempted to take one of his wife’s pills, but there’d been too much at stake to be caught unaware, befuddled and vulnerable from chemically induced sleep.

Plenty of time to sleep when you were dead.

He didn’t answer the phone until he’d walked into the large den that was down the hall from the master bedroom suite and shut the door. It was a residential phone, one that was regularly checked for surveillance.

“What took you so long in getting back?” he growled into the receiver without a greeting.

“I’m sorry. Things got a little hectic.”

“Don’t
tell
me you didn’t pull it off.”

“No . . . no, the deal went off just fine. From what I’ve heard, it was quite a fireworks display.”

He paused, his jaw clenching tight as realization hit him. “Jesus. By ‘a little hectic’ don’t tell me you lost him?
Again
? After he fell right into your pocket today by showing up at his condo and then his office?”

“It wasn’t my fault. Listen, we tailed him from his office building, but then he went to the one place in the city where you specifically said you didn’t want us anywhere near tonight.”

“He went to the
warehouse
? Is he alive?”

“Yeah. I thought at first he might have caught the heat there himself, but I told Flavio to cruise down the street while things were still hot. He doesn’t have a record,” Garnier said rapidly, obviously sensing he was about to be reprimanded for the news. “There’s nothing on Flavio, nothing the feds could trace back to us even if they did have the area under surveillance.”

“And?” he asked tautly.

“Nicasio’s car wasn’t in the parking lot,” Garnier admitted.

A pain went through his chest at the news. His goddamn acid reflux had been biting at him from the inside out for weeks now. “Do you mean to say you have no fucking idea where he is?”

“Don’t worry,” Garnier said grimly. “We have his condo and his office staked out, his club, favorite restaurant, Kelly’s house, plus the residences of most of his friends. He hasn’t been seeing anyone regularly for the past few months, but I put a couple guys on the residences of two of his former girlfriends. Figured it couldn’t hurt.”