High-Stakes Playboy (17 page)

“Any chance I can persuade you to do something naughty with me?” she inquired. “Maybe show me something I’ve never tried before?”

The idea of being the first to show her a whole host of sexy things all but did him in.

He groaned and barely managed to cobble together a semicoherent, “What, uh, did you, uh,
damn
, have in mind?”

“I thought I’d rely on your vast experience to come up with something interesting.”

He laughed painfully. “If you don’t stop squeezing me and kissing me like that, I’m not going to be able to think of anything at all.”

She pulled back from him immediately. Relief in his brain warred with dismay in his body. “New and different, huh?” He considered her thoughtfully, now that he wasn’t being driven completely out of his mind and could actually breathe. “You’re sure you’re not sore?”

“Well, maybe a little. But would you believe me if I said I kind of like it?”

A slow smile unfolded within him. “Well, then. That does open up some fascinating possibilities.” As her face lit up, he added wryly, “Going to be the adventurous type, huh?”

She nodded at him, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. Her breathing sped up visibly as her breasts lifted and fell with her quick little gasps.
Good grief, she liked the danger.
The domestic-goddess wannabe had given way to this seductive siren.

His imagination shifted into overdrive. But before he acted on his fantasies, he wanted to hear hers. He slipped his hand lower, down the gentle swell of her belly and lower, relishing the limpid surrender in her as she buried her face against his shoulder and moaned a little in pleasure.

It took about two seconds to stroke her into a state of mindless lust. “Tell me what you want to try, baby.”

“Um, I don’t know...” A gasp as he plunged a finger inside her and withdrew it slowly. He repeated the process until she was panting in sexy little gasps. “I like this.”

“So do I. Tell me what else you want me to do.” He lifted his hand away from her hot, needy flesh.

“Archer!”

“Talk to me. I’m yours to direct as you wish.”

Her cheeks went rosy with embarrassment, but he didn’t break down and take charge. He waited until she started speaking hesitantly.

“I want to make love with you again. Now. In front of the fire.”

“What else?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And maybe try a few different positions to see what feels best.”

“What would you like to try first?”

Her blush intensified, spreading down her neck and across the upper reaches of her breasts. “I have no idea.”

“First, because you’re fairly new to this and I don’t want to hurt you, I’m going to suggest we make sure you’re entirely ready.”

“Meaning what?” she asked breathlessly.

He leaned down over her and kissed her long and druggingly. “Meaning, that I’m going to make sure you’re very turned on before we engage in any gymnastics.”

She was so open and enthusiastic and trusted him implicitly. In turn, he trusted her to be honest with him. It added a dimension to sex play that he’d never experienced, either, and he reveled in the newness of it right along with her.
Huh
. Maybe there really was something to the whole soul-mate thing, after all.

He stopped their increasing frantic explorations abruptly. “Hold that thought,” he ordered.

She wailed in frustration as he rose to his knees and lifted her up. Oh, she was going to be tons of fun to play with.

“I don’t want you to get cold while we do this,” he explained, guiding her hands to the warm stones of the raised hearth. He moved behind her, spooning her smaller body with his larger one. “Bend forward a little, baby.”

“Oh,” she murmured. “Oh!” He entered her slowly from behind, giving her body plenty of time to adjust to this new kind of invasion. She was so tight and hot around him he worried that he was hurting her.

He stopped, but Marley was having none of that. She drove her hips backward and down onto him in no uncertain terms.

“Oh, my.” She sighed. “That’s very nice.”

“Nice?” he echoed indignantly. “I’m not going for nice here.”

“Then stop holding back,” she challenged him over her shoulder.

He chuckled and drove up into her more strongly.

“Mmm. Better. But not quite doing it for me.”

His laughter took on a helpless quality. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I’m insatiable,” she announced cheerfully. “And you’re lagging in the sating department, good sir.”

“I wouldn’t want to let the lady down, now would I?” And with that, he commenced sating her with quite a bit more vigor and enthusiasm.

In seconds, Marley was arching back against him, groaning in pleasure and then crying out more sharply as an orgasm built deep inside her. He felt it in the way her internal muscles clutched at him more urgently, in how she met his thrusts with eager thrusts of her own, in the way her breathing caught in her throat with each cry of lust he wrung from her.

Without warning, she shattered around him, crying out and shuddering violently in her release, dancing upon his flesh like a faerie nymph in the flickering light of the fire. It was one of the most erotic things he’d ever seen. She was so totally open to him and held nothing back from him.

The rush of a woman giving herself to him so completely, body and soul, was intoxicating. Something deep in his heart—something angry and locked down—broke loose and floated away on her sighs of pleasure. In the past, he would have taken a certain dark satisfaction in driving a woman out of her mind while he retained a certain emotional detachment. But here...now...he only wanted to give Marley all the pleasure she’d ever fantasized about. He wanted to give her all of himself in return.

He stayed very still, reveling in the new orgasm building within her. It was exquisite. He didn’t even have to move for her to come.

“Archer,” she gasped. “What are you doing to me?”

Slowly, slowly, he moved in and out of her, counting each time she cried out and convulsed around him.

Finally, when she was a quivering mass of desire and her eyes were completely glazed with pleasure, he let go. Unclenching his jaw at last, he surged into her and, with a shout of his own, buried himself inside her sweet body one last time. She responded to that ultimate thrust with one last, apocalyptic orgasm of her own.

He took everything she had to give and, in return, poured everything in his heart into her. His entire being exploded into that climax, and it felt as if a giant, damaged chunk of his soul went with it.

He braced himself against the hearth with a hand on either side of her, panting like a racehorse. She was breathing just as hard and rested quiescently against him, spent.

“You okay?” he murmured.

“Better than okay,” she breathed. She turned in his arms and he gathered her close, lowering her to the quilt and joining her upon it. “Thank you, Archer. That was...spectacular.”

He pushed the hair off her face gently and leaned down to kiss her cheek “You were spectacular.”

“Can we do something else new? Soon?”

Amazement soared through him. And joy. She was perfect. That was all there was to it. “Yes. Soon. I promise.”

“Pinkie swear?” she replied in a small voice.

“Good grief, I’ve created a monster.”

“Hopefully, a monster you won’t mind feeding?” She smiled up at him over her shoulder, looking as pleasured and relaxed as any woman he’d ever seen. It was a beautiful sight. Something strange unfolded in his gut, like a flower opening or a butterfly unfurling its wings.

Except he didn’t do butterflies and flowers. Yup, no doubt about it. He was losing his mind.

He laughed ruefully. “Baby, it’s going to be a long time before I get tired of feeding your curiosity.

“I’d love to offer you a nice long soak in a hot bath, but until we get power back, there won’t be any hot water—” he glanced around the cabin “—unless...”

He jumped up and went over to the kitchen cabinets to rummage around.
“Aha!”
He emerged with giant soup kettle. “It’ll take a while to heat up the water, but I might be able to get you a hot bath, after all.”

She dozed in the big armchair before the fire while he heated the water, but in an hour or so, he was able to fill the bathtub with hot water and then add just enough cold water to create a steaming bath for her.

“Wake up, sleepyhead. Your bath is ready.”

She smiled up at him blissfully and he leaned down to kiss her softly. “You’re perfect,” he whispered.

And she was his...

Since when did he get possessive over a woman? Hell, he’d hadn’t even been possessive of his toys as a kid! He installed her in the tub with a pile of towels waiting beside it and backed out of the bathroom with an admonition to her not to fall asleep and drown.

“I wasn’t a Girl Scout for nothing, you know,” she called after him as he pulled the door shut. “There’s a merit badge for avoiding stupid ways of dying!”

He grinned at the closed panel. Something light and silly twisted in his gut. Damn, he was all over the emotional map today. Men didn’t get crazy hormone surges, did they?

While she soaked, he carried in a few more armloads of wood. It had indeed gotten very cold outside, but the good news was the falling snow was finally starting to slow down. Upward of two feet of the stuff had come down already. Damn. They could be snowed in here for several days.

He took a long, hard look around the tiny clearing around the cabin. Nothing moved in the forest. He saw no sign of any intruder lurking out there, watching and waiting to harm Marley. But the flesh at the back of his neck still crawled. They had to get out of here before anything bad happened to her. He wanted Marley back in town, close to Steve and the other stunt crew members who were trained Special Forces types.

The sooner, the better.

* * *

Marley luxuriated in the hot bath, which felt as unreal and fantastic as the sex she’d just had with Archer. As flings went, this had to be just about the mother of them all.

Her bliss dimmed slightly.
If only this weren’t just a fling.
If only this was the beginning of something wonderful and lasting. Then her happiness would be complete. But Archer would be gone in a few short weeks. She’d known that going into this affair, so it wasn’t like she could blame him for it now. He was going to leave her as surely as the sun rose and set.

She sighed and sank to her neck in the water. It wasn’t his fault she’d chosen to have her first fling with a soldier on leave.

No regrets, darn it. No second-guessing. She was finally rid of her pesky virginity, and if she played her cards right, he would divest her of a whole lot more of her inconvenient innocence, too.

Apparently, she had forgiven him for not trusting her before and not telling her about his temporary status stateside. She probably shouldn’t have. Great sex didn’t make his other bad behaviors acceptable. But dang, it was hard to see anything past the mind-blowing pleasure he gave her.

It wasn’t as if he was going to stick around for a real relationship that would require them to work out their differences, though.

Except she really wanted to work things out with him.

If only Archer wouldn’t leave her.
The seductive pull of that idea, of Archer staying home, making her his, protecting her and loving her for a very long time to come...
oh, my
. She was getting a little breathless at the mere thought of it.

Fear, cold and insidious, abruptly clutched at her. She dared not fall in love with him for real. He would be here for a few more weeks, tops, and then he would be out of her life and off to fight his wars. She would be a total idiot to lose her heart to him.

At all costs, she must
not
get any more emotionally involved with this man than she already was.

Except she already was too far gone. When he left, she was going to be utterly and completely devastated. She could already feel the beginnings of the agony waiting for her in a few weeks. The mere idea of him going away provoked a hot knife of pain in her heart.

A sinking feeling that she’d done a bad, bad thing rolled through her. Like it or not, she was already a whole lot more than just infatuated with Archer.

This sucked. She wanted him forever. But he only wanted her for now. She’d chosen a guy for a fling far too well. He made no bones about the fact that he didn’t stick around for long-term relationships. He freely admitted that he jumped in and out of bed with women, that he shamelessly used his good looks to get laid and that he wasn’t looking for anything more than hot chicks and hotter sex.

An end to their relationship was not a probability. It was a certainty. A month from now, he would be halfway around the world in some danger zone flying choppers right on the edge of disaster and bedding every sexy female who crossed his path. And Marley would be just another notch on his bedpost, long forgotten.

If she were smart, she would cut her losses and run. Now. Before he saw beneath the Marilyn Monroe makeup and sexual adventurousness. Before he realized she was really as plain as white bread, inside and out, and dumped her cold. God, how humiliating would it be to watch him sleep his way through the other women in the cast and crew over the next two weeks? And it would happen right under her nose because they were all living practically on top of one another in that damned motel.

The shame of it, of having not been enough to keep him occupied for more than a weekend in the mountains, would kill her. But maybe...if
she
dumped
him
first, at least she would garner some sympathy and respect for having realized he was a shallow womanizer and gotten rid of him. She was so tired of being a joke to other people.

Not to mention, she was letting her imagination completely run away with her. Archer hadn’t dumped her. He hadn’t left her yet. And truth be told, he’d seemed as blown away by their lovemaking as she’d been. She owed the guy a chance to see where this thing between them went before she assumed the worst.

But a trace of the fear stayed with her as she climbed out of the rapidly cooling bath.