Flirting With Disaster (26 page)

That was good. Every whimper she made gave him a little more power back, a fraction more command of himself.

He bit her, rocking her nub between his tongue and teeth. She bucked and gasped, and when she said his name, he heard the edge he wanted. The knife’s blade that told him he’d knocked her out of the driver’s seat.

“Sean. Holy—
Oh
. Sean, I’m going to come.”

“Do it,” he ordered. “I want you to.”

Another soft bite. When he sucked her clit into his mouth, she tightened like a vise around his fingers, crying out his name before she lost language altogether.

He laved her with his tongue, tasting her release, and then lowered her leg and kissed his way up her torso. She opened her eyes when he planted a light kiss between her eyebrows.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said in a breathless voice. “But ohmigod thank you for doing that.”

He kissed her mouth and leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “Want to go upstairs?”

She buried her hands in his hair and tugged his head down for a deep, searing kiss.

He picked her up. Picked her up and carried her, as if she were Scarlett O’Hara and he were Rhett Butler, if Rhett had been the kind of guy to go down on Scarlett in a doorway. Which, let’s be honest, he probably was.

Katie was no petite southern belle, but he lifted her as if she weighed nothing. It was off-the-charts sexy. Sexy enough to make her knees wobble if she’d still been standing up, which she wasn’t, and if they hadn’t already been wobbly since the second he yanked her down between his legs and kissed the living daylights out of her.

Which they had.

Sean picked her up and carried her upstairs as though people actually did this kind of thing, and he laid her on a bed in a room she didn’t even begin to register the details of, because she couldn’t see anything but him. He took off his shirt and covered her with his body and kissed her again, and she could only say his name.

Every time she remembered to inhale, she smelled his soap. His hips pinned her in place, his hands stroking over her, less insistent than before but still compelling her to respond. Which she did, gladly.

She was a dozen different temperatures, but he was hot all over. His hands, his mouth, his nose. The heat of his thigh through his jeans. Overwhelming. Intense. So focused, so determined.

His mouth worked its way downward, those talented hands sliding up her back as his lips found her nipple, and she lost the thread for a while, too busy making noises she’d later find too mortifying to even process the details of the experience.

Then he backed off and looked at her, his eyes performing a slow scan down her body. Lingering on her breasts. Passing over her belly button. Hovering between her legs until she accepted his silent demand and parted them, and he inhaled. He’d already touched her everywhere, but this was more intimate. More naked.

If he saw anything he didn’t like, he didn’t show it. His stern face, the need in his gaze—he was the most arousing thing she’d ever seen.

He wanted her. This man, this handsome, hard slab of a man, with his lean, powerful
body and his hungry eyes. This man with his flaws and his scars and his house full of unpacked boxes and bad memories.

He
needed
her.

“Come here,” she said.

He ignored her. He wasn’t done looking yet, but she wanted to see him, too. He had a fighter’s body, lean and defined. The body of a man who’d refused to soften into the middle of life—who’d grown harder instead, pushing himself with the discipline Sean brought to everything.

She wanted to feel his weight and watch him poised over her, the muscles of his stomach flexing as he thrust inside her. She wanted to be what he needed.

“Let me see you.”

He stripped off his pants and briefs in one efficient movement without taking his eyes off her.

“Oh,” she said. She’d seen him before, of course, bare-chested in Buffalo and again in the back of the car, but this was different. This was everything, all at once, and that look in his eyes …

She caught her breath. “Get over here.”

Sean smiled for the first time since she’d arrived at his house. Slow and inevitable as the arrival of the dawn, the smile stole a piece of her she’d been holding apart.

A crease appeared between his eyebrows. He stood up and took a step away from the bed. “Hang on,” he said. “Don’t move.”

He disappeared, and she heard the stairs creak as he descended. Alarm bells started going off in the back of her head, self-doubting voices whispering unwelcome questions like
Where is this going?
and
What’s all this about ‘need’?
and
Do you have any idea what you’re getting into?

But before the mind-fuckery could work up much steam, Sean returned and dropped the condoms on the mattress. He moved right up over her and pressed her into the bed and kissed her until her head went quiet.

He kissed her until her breasts grew heavy and her stomach tightened and her hips lifted and every inch of her skin started to plead,
For the love of all that is holy, more. More. Now. More
.

When she said it aloud, he kissed her throat, her chest, her stomach.

“Why haven’t we been doing this all week?” she asked the ceiling.

Sean didn’t answer. He was too busy investigating her belly button with his tongue.

That was okay. The question would keep. The ache he’d reawakened between her thighs, though—that demanded a response.

He gave it with his fingers, parting her swollen, slippery flesh and coaxing a terribly unsexy sound from her throat. He smiled and moved back over her, kissing her deep as his fingers moved inside her deeper and curved until he found a spot that made her buck instinctively and swear like a sailor.

“There it is,” he murmured.

Thumb glancing over her clit. Fingers gliding in and out, finding that sweet spot on every stroke and making her heels scrabble for purchase. Making her hands clutch at his shoulders and her nails dig into his biceps. Making her tear her head away and bite her lip because it was too much, and the low, tight tingling centered around Sean’s hand would be her undoing.

She careered toward the edge, trusting Sean to keep her safe. Trusting his self-command. But it didn’t feel quite right. She wanted the Sean she’d had in the car. The one who’d shared command with her.

“Don’t make me come again,” she said. “I want you with me.”

“Next time. This time, I get to watch.” His voice in her ear was so low and growly, his hands between her legs so masterful, she gave in and let the orgasm rip through her, one tight, titanic wave that left her trembling when it receded.

As promised, he watched her, his deep blue irises glittering with possessive satisfaction.

“Holy shit,” she said.

“Mmm,” he replied.

Then he started all over again.

He began at her toes and kissed and nibbled his way up her legs, finding erogenous zones she hadn’t even known she had. His hands massaged her hips and her ass, his mouth moved up her inner thigh, and she couldn’t do anything but stroke the top of his head with shaking fingers and beg.

It wasn’t what she wanted.

“Sean, come here.”

He hooked one hand behind her knee and opened her up to his tongue, licking her sensitized clit with one firm, short stroke that loosed horrible, wonderful aftershocks. With her fingers fisted in his hair, she tossed her head and bit her lip hard enough to hurt. “Come here.”

“No.”

Katie ran out of patience. Grabbing his shoulders, she pulled him toward her and slid down the bed at the same time, away from his questing mouth.

“Enough,” she said. “Come here, for crying out loud. I want you.”

Sean was on his hands and knees above her, and her calves dangled off the foot of the bed. When he caught sight of her frustrated expression, an unexpected smile broke his composure, lighting up his whole face. Funny Sean again.

“You need me for something?” he asked. “I’m kind of busy.”

“Yes,” she said, running restless fingers down his stomach to claim her prize. Her free hand found purchase on a bicep taut from carrying his weight. “You going to make me beg?”

“That was the idea.”

“Don’t you have needs to satisfy?” she asked, accentuating her question with the movement of her fist along his rigid length. “I’m not a completely selfish person. What do you like?”

He knocked her hand loose, captured her fingers, and raised her arm above her head, bringing the other up to meet it.

“You.”

This time, when he lowered his head to kiss her, she wrapped her legs around his waist, lifted her hips against his straining cock, and begged with her body as his tongue penetrated her mouth, explicit and obscene.

“Now,” she said, wriggling against him until he was positioned at her entrance, nudging her open. “
Now
.” With a sneaky upward thrust, she took in a few beautiful inches.

Sean swore and pulled out, rolling to one side and reaching for the condoms he’d dropped on the bed.

“Hurry,” she warned.

“Or what?” Paper tore, and Sean directed his attention downward.

“Or I start to bite.”

Then he was looming over her again, smiling that wicked smile. “Promise?”

She’d never been a biter, but then she’d never been a thrasher or a moaner before Sean, either. “You’ll have to drive me to it,” she said.

His only answer was that confident one-dimpled smirk.

He pushed her knees up, spread her wide, and watched her face as he began to move inside her with short, shallow thrusts, each one a little deeper and a little better than the last. His pupils dilated. His jaw tightened. His breath came rough and ragged as he claimed her without apology, his movements just this side of too rough, until the entire thick, hard length of him was pulsing inside her and he closed his eyes and said, “Oh, ffuck.”

Katie cupped his face in her hand, amazed how different it was to be able to see him. How different he was tonight than he’d been in the SUV.

Tight and edgy. Hurting.

“Sean?” She stroked the hair at the nape of his neck, her hips already rocking, trying to take him deeper even as she stretched to accommodate him. He was big. Big, and so unbelievably hard.

Restless and greedy for more, she circled her pelvis. Sean grabbed her thigh with one huge hand and said, “Don’t.”

Katie moaned and disobeyed.

“Please, d-don’t,” he said. “You’re so tight. Jesus, I c-can’t—”

“Move,” she demanded, pushing her hips hard up into his. “Now.”

“Damn it.”

She felt the moment when he lost it, and it sent a thrill straight through her, a blue electric blaze of forbiddenness. One hand buried itself under her ass, the other braced against the headboard behind her, and he breathed hard and thrust into her, finding a fast, fierce rhythm that was exactly what she needed from him.

They were supposed to be nothing more than partners with good chemistry. Consenting adults having a good time together. Sean was her inadvisable man, her torrid urge. A whim.

But it wasn’t like that at all. Her craving for him rose with every blunt stroke, no anonymous biological thing. No whim.

It was Sean.

And she knew—the blood singing in her veins, the pounding of her heart, the energy pouring through her and centering where she clamped him tight between her thighs—nobody
else could do this to her. Nobody ever had, and nobody ever would. Only Sean.

“Harder,” she said.

He shuddered.

“Look at me,” she commanded.

Those dark eyes, almost black. Pain and lust and something that might have been trust.

She wouldn’t think. She would only feel.

Her heels digging into his back. Her entire being focusing to a sharp, tight peak. Dirty. Lurid. Perfect.

She sank her teeth into his shoulder when she came, and he stiffened, his own release accompanied by a rough, animal groan that went on and on, sounding in her head long after they’d finished. Long after she tasted the tang of his sweat on her tongue, swallowed against a throat raw from crying out.

Even after the pulsing pleasure receded and she felt the dull ache between her sticky thighs, she could still hear the echo of that sound.

They breathed together, bathed in sweat.

Wrecked.

Reborn.

She didn’t know as what.

When Sean moved off her and collapsed facedown on the bed, Katie opened her eyes and took a long, deep breath.

Don’t think
, she told herself.
Not yet
.

She could hear all the doubt crows rustling around, bumping her shoulders, staring down at the naked forms on the bed.

Not yet
.

She fixed her eyes on the wall instead.

That’s when she saw the
Star Wars
posters.

“Nice posters.”

It felt like the thing to say. Attack with levity, because what was she going to do with him otherwise? Make something more of what had happened than she should? Fall in love with him?

No
.

Her voice came out sounding as though she’d been smoking a pack a day for forty years, which seemed about right. She was fairly sure she couldn’t lift her arms. Never before had sex left her a boneless husk. She hadn’t even known to aspire to huskdom.

Sean didn’t lift his forehead from where it was buried in his pillow. “How hard do I have to fuck you to k-keep you from p-picking on me?”

She rolled over and splayed herself across his back, enjoying his heat and sweat and the tidal rise and fall of his breathing. “I’m never going to stop picking on you.”

He turned his head sideways so she could see his smirk. “I have good art at my house in C-california.”

“Princess Leia cast in bronze?”

Sean grinned and buried his face in the pillow again, and Katie found enough strength to throw a leg over his hips and climb properly on top of him so she could lie down again with her cheek resting between his shoulder blades.

“Now you’re trying to ssuffocate me,” he said.

“Too heavy?”