Forged in Ash (9 page)

“Yeah…” His voice trailed off. His flat, uninterested voice.

This time she couldn’t stop the quick glance to his crotch. His shorts looked like they’d ballooned another inch or so. He may not have responded verbally, but he’d definitely reacted physically to her admission.

So who was skirting the issue now?

Another wave of heat rolled through her, only this time a good dose of irritation threaded through the lust. The irritation escalated as the dampness and swelling between her legs increased.

The tingles skating up and down her spine and into the nape of her neck didn’t help.

She wanted him, wanted to feel that hot hard weight of him against her, inside of her. She’d wanted him for years. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted another man.

And she was tired of him pretending she was the only one feeling this way.

He wanted her too. They both knew it. It was time he admitted it. Out loud, to her face.

And she knew just how to drag that admission out of him.

Cosky closed his eyes, his muscles rigid beneath her touch, trying to banish the memory of the heated glow suffusing her face as she’d admitted to the attraction she felt for him. He shouldn’t have pushed her but, damn it, he’d expected the subtle challenge to warn her off, back them both off, set them squarely on the moral high ground.

He sure as hell hadn’t expected her to grab hold of his innuendo and lob it directly at him.

As soon as her hands started up again, gliding over his knee with that slow circular sliding rhythm, he raised his arm slightly and stared at her. The folded towel lifted his head just enough to afford him a perfect view of her face. Her rosy, perspiring face.

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, which drew his attention to her lush mouth. His belly tightened beneath a surge of
rampant hunger. There was a hint of a dip in the middle of that ripe bottom lip. His mouth watered. What would it feel like beneath his tongue? What would it taste like?

What did she taste like?

Oranges? Had that citrusy scent permeated her skin?

His balls tightened at the question. And his cock throbbed like an abscessed tooth.

He tried to drag his eyes away, but they refused to budge; which was bad news when she suddenly shot him a flirty little look out of the corner of her eye. It was the kind of look a woman gave a man when she had him squarely in her crosshairs.

Or when she knew she was in his crosshairs.

It was the last look he wanted to see coming from her. Particularly now, while he was lying all but naked and fully aroused beneath her hands.

Jesus, he was in trouble. Big trouble.

A groan tried to escape his throat. He swallowed it and forced his arm back down and across his traitorous eyes. In the darkness that fell as his eyes closed, her hot, strong hands abandoned his knee and began a teasing, erotic glide up his thigh.

Every stroke, every teasing caress, brought them closer to his shorts and the storm taking place beneath them.

There was pure seduction in her hands, in their purposeful climb up his leg.

He wanted to be wrong about that. He was too damn close as it was to dragging her down to his mouth, rolling over, and driving into her like a rabid animal. It was hard enough keeping his own impulses in check, let alone hers.

Her fingers teased the hem of his shorts and hung there, a silent invitation.

He choked on another groan, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes.

She was watching him steadily, her face rosy with heat. A silent invitation in her eyes.

“No,” he said, and winced as the denial came out more questioning than determined.

She tilted her head, still watching him, her hands just sitting there, burning against the top of his thigh.

“Why? You want me. I want you. We’re both single. Uninvolved. It harms no one.” Her words sounded collected, her question sophisticated, but her cheeks were growing rosier by the moment.

“I’m not looking to get involved.”

Which would have sounded more convincing if his ass hadn’t taken on a life of its own and lifted slightly, encouraging her fingers to slide beneath the hem of his shorts.

“I’m not asking for an involvement,” she said, and her fingers did this hot little shimmy and scrape that sent his balls up into his belly.

She was killing him.

“I’m asking for half an hour,” she added in a silky voice, her fingernails slipping beneath his shorts and lightly scraping his skin.

He gritted his teeth, a shower of sparks playing a fourth of July fireworks show up and down his spine. Half an hour? If she kept that up it would be more like two seconds, followed by a solid week.

She leaned forward slightly, her fingers exploring deeper beneath his shorts. His cock twitched in anticipation and stretched forward, eager to greet her.

“What’s the harm?” she whispered, her fingers going still again.

The harm was that she’d sink into him, bond to his bone and he’d never be able to cut her out. Never feel complete without her.

He didn’t need that kind of complication. Not now. Not with his whole damn life lost in complications.

He opened his mouth with the intention of saying no, of shutting the offer down hard, before it took him places he couldn’t afford to go. Except, that wasn’t what came out of his mouth.

“I don’t have any condoms.”

Where the hell had that come from? It was hardly a denial.

“I’m on the pill.”

The words just hung there, throbbing in the space between them. His gaze locked on her face, on the fullness and faint trembling of her lips. Her eyes held his squarely; her gaze was bright with hunger, but pink was flooding her cheeks. And not the pink of arousal. She wasn’t nearly as blasé about this as she wanted him to believe.

He hesitated while every atom in his body screamed yes and every cell in his brain screamed no.

The hesitation went on long enough to crack her confidence. Red flooded her face. Humiliation crested in her eyes. She pulled back, jerking her gaze and hands away at the same time.

He wasn’t even aware of moving.

One second he was flat on his back, the next he’d jackknifed up, reached for her, and dragged her down to the sofa, where she lay atop him, draping him from hips to shoulders.

He took her mouth in an urgent, raw kiss. Her lips were soft against his, sweet—but without the citrus tang he’d expected. They tasted like…roses…which was the oddest thing, because he’d never tasted a rose before. Until her.

As his hands dove into the knot of hair pinned to the back of her head, pins went flying. A thick braid slipped down. He caught the end, stripped the band away, and combed his fingers through the bound pale tresses until a waterfall of gold spilled down, cocooning
them within a veil of shimmering gold. A swath slipped over his shoulders in a silky slither, and goose bumps raced over his skull and down the back of his neck.

His heart stopped for one long minute and then leapt into double time.

The feel of her silky, cool hair sliding over his hot, sensitive skin was unbelievably erotic. Even more so than it had been in the dream.

But then, he had the unmistakable feeling that was going to be the theme song of this particular moment…

He opened his mouth, urging her lips apart, stopping long enough to trace that sexy dip in the middle of her bottom lip with his tongue—the slight indentation that had been driving him crazy for the past few minutes. She quivered against him and parted her lips, and her tongue darted out, brushing his own. The light erotic slide of tongue against tongue sent a pulse of electricity down his spine and into his balls.

With gentle pressure he bit her bottom lip and drew it into his mouth, suckling it. She jolted against him, and the cool curtain of hair caressed his shoulders again, inciting another shower of sparks.

If her hair felt like liquid sex, and so damn good against his skin, what would her skin feel like against his? Driven to find out, he slid his hands down to the middle of her torso, where he grabbed a fistful of fabric and dragged it up. She pushed herself up so he could strip the shirt over her head and then folded herself over him again, her brown eyes glowing and intense, her hair a tousled shimmer of gold falling along either side of his head.

He groaned as her lips found the side of his neck and latched on, suckling. Christ, each tug of her mouth against his skin sent pulses of fire straight to his cock. Each brush of her sleek, damp skin against his chest tightened his balls.

His hands felt huge and awkward as he slid them up the length of her spine, searching for her bra. He unhooked it, barely paying attention as it slipped down her arms and she lifted herself enough to shake it loose. Aching to feel the cool, sleekness of her against his palms, he trailed his hands up her spine, and around to her chest, cupping her breasts. They fit his palms perfectly—not too big, not too small, simply perfect.

She gasped as he gently squeezed the soft mounds, and shivered when he brushed his thumbs across the turgid nipples. But within seconds his focus changed. How would those delicate mounds feel against his tongue? Inside his mouth? Did she taste like roses or oranges there?

Driven to find out, he slipped his palms back around to her spine, sliding them down and down until they dipped beneath the thin cotton of her sweats to grasp the cool globes of her ass. She arched against him, her breathing quickening, her heart pounding against his until he could hear it in his head—connecting them.

Her mouth swooped down and fastened on his, her tongue plunging between his lips in a parody of lovemaking—the thrust and retreat, thrust and rub. Cosky’s lungs seized. His head swam as her tongue fucked his.

And Jesus, an explosion of roses and oranges surrounded him, enveloping him in a scented bubble of pure sensation. When her hips pressed down, grinding against his, the glimmering veil of hair draping them glided over his hot, tight skin. His entire body clenched, and he came close—far too close—to losing it completely right then. Right there.

He needed to get the rest of her clothes off her. Bare skin to bare skin. Muscle to muscle. Sex to sex.

After a slow squeeze of those perfect cheeks, he slid his hand back up to her waist and eased her thin pants, along with her panties,
down her hips. Without taking her mouth from his, she lifted her hips, allowing him to push the cloth down her thighs. She did the rest by stretching out across him, breast to chest, thigh to thigh, as she kicked off her pants. When her knee bumped his, something niggled at him, something important, but he lost the thread as her hands tightened around the waistband of his shorts and tugged.

He dragged his mouth from hers and growled softly, “Not yet.”

She laughed, her fingers sliding beneath his shorts. Swearing, he captured her hands and dragged them around her back, and pinned them there.

The instant he felt that hot damp clasp around his cock, he’d lose it. The urge to roll and bury himself inside her silky channel was already digging into him, more urgent by the second, and that was with the thin layer of cotton between them. She needed to be ready for him. Ready to let go and fly.

She wasn’t there yet.

But she would be. Soon.

She punished him with a nip to the side of his neck, followed by the slow soothing sweep of her tongue.

“Think of where else I could be licking you,” she whispered into his ear, just before she took the lobe in her teeth and tugged.

Jesus Christ.

His entire body quaked beneath her as an image of her mouth locked around his cock slammed into his mind. He drove the image away and took her mouth again, while his hands glided over to the cheeks of her ass. He traced the crescent between the twin moons and widened his fingers, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing, matching the rhythm of his hands to the plunges of his tongue. She did another of those sultry shimmies, her pelvis brushing against his,
which drained the blood from his brain into his crotch, leaving him light-headed above and throbbing.

And then her legs separated, falling alongside his, until the damp flesh between her thighs was riding the bulge beneath his shorts.

He groaned, his back arching, pressing his cock into her. The movement dragged her breasts up. Her nipples brushed his hot skin, bringing another flush of heat. With one last squeeze, he shifted his grip to her hips and lifted her, dragging her forward until her breasts, with their engorged, dark nipples, were even with his mouth. She froze when he licked the right nipple—stopped breathing as he caught the peaked flesh between his teeth, gently bore down, and tugged. The next tug brought a choked cry.

When he drew her nipple into his mouth and suckled hard, she writhed against him, rubbing herself harder and harder against his crotch.

To ease the need burning between them, he pushed a hand between their hips and worked it between her legs. She was hot and wet and ready for him—her flesh quivering against his fingertips. He parted the damp folds of her sex and stroked her opening, feeling the clench of her around his invading finger. A shiver shook her and ran through him. He went dizzy. Hungrier than he’d ever been before in his life.