His for the Taking (17 page)

And now she was walking across the parking lot with him, towards the room where they would shortly engage in what she was sure would be the most pleasurable sexual intercourse she had ever experienced in her life.

‘Room sixteen,’ she said, checking the plastic fob on the room key and not meeting Nick’s eyes. The motel was a motor court, with the rooms arranged in a low white clapboard building lining two sides of the parking lot. Zoe headed for the left hand side, without looking to see if Nick was following her; she knew he was. ‘Right next to the ice machine, the lady said.’

‘That’ll be handy if we need cooling down,’ Nick said. She didn’t need to see his expression. The man was sex personified.

‘You’re a real smooth talker, do you know that?’

‘Hey, you have to develop a good line in charm when you’re trying to coax a wounded deer out of a thicket.’

‘Well, I’m not a wounded deer.’ She reached the door and slid the key into the lock. It took a little bit of jiggling before it turned.

‘No, you certainly are not.’ Nick stepped into the room after her and she barely had a chance to put down the pigeon and look around before his hands were on her shoulders, turning her gently around to face him.

‘You’re a sexy, intelligent, exciting woman,’ he murmured. He trailed one of his fingertips down the side of her cheek and over her lips, so tender and warm it felt like a kiss. ‘I’m glad you decided to get one room instead of two, Zoe.’

With his words she realised that he had arranged it on purpose so he had been busy paying the driver while she’d booked the room. He’d wanted to give her a choice about whether they’d share. About whether they’d sleep together.

‘They weren’t cheap,’ she hedged, and then felt her cheeks flush as she realised what a stupid thing she’d said. ‘Of course, I could probably buy the whole hotel if I wanted to, huh?’

‘And the one next to it,’ he agreed. ‘We didn’t even have to be in the same building if you didn’t want to.’

‘Well, we are,’ she said, and turned away from him to look around the room. It was mainly decorated in the sort of orange that had been in style in the seventies. The carpet was burnt umber, the wallpaper was beige with terracotta diamonds, the bedside lamps were tangerine. There was a picture of a lobster on the wall.

And the bed was big. Big and bedlike and orange with some sort of wicker headboard. Big and obvious and unavoidable because that was the place where the two of them were going to have sex with each other, because Zoe had made that decision, she’d decided it as soon as she’d kissed Nick, she’d decided it when she’d decided to come with him to Maine, and she wanted to have sex with Nick more than she wanted anything else in the world so why was she getting cold feet now?

She turned back to Nick. He’d put down his pack and her bag and was standing watching her. He still wore his shorts, running shoes and T-shirt and the outfit left little to the imagination. She could see the strength of his shoulders, the broad outline of his chest. She remembered what he looked like without a shirt on, and what he’d felt like when she’d touched him in the gym. His legs were muscular, perfect. The man even had sexy knees. And at his crotch, the material of his shorts was beginning to tighten and outline his arousal.

Yeah. Sexy man. This was not the problem. She met his eyes and faced the problem.

His eyes were dark and intense. His mouth was both firm and gentle. His cheekbones were noble, his chin was masculine. He was absolutely everything she dreamed about in a man and she was right back to what she’d been afraid of in the gym because if she slept with him she was going to tumble right into stupid, idiotic, kick-yourself-in-the-head type love with him.

‘Zoe?’ he said softly, and didn’t make a move towards her.

He was coaxing her. Like a damn injured deer.

Zoe straightened her spine at the realisation.

He thought she was afraid? He could have another think coming. She’d decided on a NewYork sidewalk to come up here to Maine with him and she’d decided by a Maine highway that she wasn’t going to be scared of anything. And she wasn’t.

This was Nick’s world, pine scent and lobster and all. It wasn’t her world. She wasn’t staying here, and she could take care of herself, and when she went back to NewYork she could carry on from where she left off. Because she always had.

Zoe smiled at Nick. She’d show him how scared she was.

She grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head.

Nick’s eyes just about bugged out of their sockets. She saw him stare, saw him swallow, saw him not breathing. She watched his eyes travel over her chest. Her sports bra was black and not the most feminine thing on the planet, but Nick didn’t seem to care.

Zoe knew she wasn’t pretty, but she did like her body all right. She worked out just about every day; she was trim and fit and healthy and she’d had enough lovers to know that her body was attractive.

But the way Nick was staring at her was different from the way any other man had looked at her. He wasn’t assessing her or ogling her.

He was looking at her as if she were a goddess.

‘Zoe,’ he said again, and this time it wasn’t coaxing. It was raw and full of hunger.

He took a single step towards her and Zoe saw the outline of his erection, full length now and taut against his shorts.

She wasn’t a goddess. But Nick wanted her, badly. And that made her feel powerful.

Zoe kicked off her sneakers and then hooked her fingers in the waistband of her shorts and pulled them down her legs. When she straightened up, she was wearing only her sports bra and her matching thong, and she could see Nick was breathing now, so hard he was nearly panting.

‘I need a shower,’ she said. ‘How about you?’

And she turned and walked into the bathroom, not checking if he followed her.

The bathroom wasn’t orange, mercifully, but it did have fish painted on the white tiles. The tub, with shower attached, wasn’t that big—not really big enough to get up to what she wanted to get up to in it. Zoe turned on the taps anyway and stood beside the tub in her underwear, testing the water with her hand as it warmed.

She didn’t hear him come in above the sound of the water but she felt his hands, big and warm, settle around her waist, and she felt his breath on the back of her neck. Zoe smiled and leaned slightly back against Nick. He was still dressed and his T-shirt felt soft against her bare skin, covering the hardness of his chest.

‘What took you so long?’ she murmured.

‘I was trying to believe my luck.’ He kissed her neck where it joined her shoulders and she shivered. Then she felt him unfastening her bra and gently pushing it off her shoulders. Her breasts were heavy and full, and her nipples puckered erect in the now-steamy air.

Nick smoothed his hands down her naked back and then stroked her underwear down over her hips and down her legs. His soft hair feathered the skin of her bottom as he bent to pull off the wisp of Lycra, and then his hands trailed up the backs of her legs, over her buttocks and to her hips as he straightened.

She was naked in front of him. In his hands, open to his gaze and his touch and his body.

She’d felt powerful. Now she felt like jelly.

Zoe turned around in his arms. The desire on his face nearly took her breath away.
I wanted this guy from the minute I saw him and now I’m going to have him,
she thought, and the thought spread a smile all over her face.

‘You’re wearing too much,’ she said, and tugged his T-shirt up over his head. About time she got to do that after watching him do it so many times and not being able to touch him. He raised his arms obligingly to help her remove it and she was treated to a close-up view of his naked chest, all his beautiful bulging muscles and strong sinews and bones, the trail of dark hair on his stomach.

‘Wrestling with all that wildlife has been good to you,’ she said to him. Her voice was pretty shaky.

‘Jumping up and down on that plastic thing has been good to you,’ he answered. His gaze was hot on her. ‘You’re gorgeous.’

She wanted to touch his skin. She didn’t. Looking was enough pleasure for now; touching might be too much, too good. Instead she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of his shorts, her hands just brushing his firm belly, and pulled them down.

He helped her take those off, too. He had to, because when she saw his naked body she couldn’t take her eyes off him long enough to push his shorts down his legs.

Nick naked was the most amazing sight she had ever seen in her life, ever.

He was tall and strong and every line of him was perfect, every muscle defined. He was even more desirable because she knew his muscles hadn’t been built in the gym, in front of a mirror; they’d been built working, trying to make the world a better place.

His legs and chest were tanned and he had a band of paler skin where his shorts would cover him while he was working outside. The paler skin was still masculine, but something about it seemed more naked than the rest of him. His hip bones were visible under his skin and the line of dark hair on his stomach flared out at his crotch.

His penis was beautiful. Zoe wasn’t the type to go around admiring male organs; they were there, they gave pleasure, sometimes they were pretty funny-looking. But Nick’s was part of his strength and his desire. It was part of him. It jutted out from his body, heavy and hard and long, completely in proportion with the rest of his big, hard body, and every inch of it was perfect.

Slowly, she lifted her gaze from his crotch to his face. Nick was watching her as intently as she was watching him and they still weren’t touching but meeting his eyes was a shock and a pleasure. As if he were inside her already.

The air was thick and charged and Zoe felt as if she were on the edge of an explosion.

‘I have never wanted another woman as much as I want you,’ Nick said to her. The words nearly made her groan.

‘Nick, you’re—’

You’re too good for me. And I never want you to stop looking at me the way you are now.

‘Get the soap,’ she said, her voice husky, and stepped into the shower.

The hot, pounding water was no substitute for Nick’s hot, pounding body, but it still felt good. Not a release, but a distraction, and her muscles were tight and sore from being in a car for hours and then holding herself tense next to Nick. She closed her eyes and let it roll over her skin and waited for Nick to join her.

The rattle of the shower curtain let her know he had stepped into the tub. She opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was his smile.

‘Here you go,’ he said. He had one of those little hotel soaps in his hands and he broke it in half and handed one half to her. The tub was too narrow for them both to stand underneath the spray; the water bouncing off Zoe’s body hit his in small droplets. The steam had made his hair curl at the ends.

She ran the soap between her hands to work it up into a lather. ‘Where do you want to get clean first, Boy Scout?’

‘Everywhere,’ he said.

He stood there, waiting for her to touch him. She rubbed her hands around the soap, up and down and around, feeling the friction, imagining what it would feel like to touch Nick. He would feel a million times better than this soap and her own palms.

What was she waiting for?

She knew why he was waiting. He was a damned gentleman, even stark naked in a shower.

And she was waiting, working this soap into a sliver, because…

‘You’re not scared, are you, Zoe?’

It was half in earnest, half a challenge. Zoe raised her chin and shook her wet hair back.

‘It takes more than a naked man with a huge erection to scare me, Nick Giroux,’ she said, dropping the soap, and put her hands on him.

His chest was warm and solid and slightly roughened by hair. Her fingertips, made slippery by the soap, slid on his skin, over his pecs and his collar-bone, up over his strong shoulders and back down. His nipples were hard and they rasped against her palms. His obliques, his abs, the shallow indent of his navel in his firm stomach. And then she curved her hands around to his backside and explored the perfect roundness of his glutes.

Nick groaned and he touched her.

She nearly purred as his hands, slick with soap, started at her waist and skimmed up, leaving a trail of lather, over her ribs and to her breasts. And then all her hesitation was gone, down the drain like the water in the shower and she pulled him towards her with her fingertips digging into his buttocks and he met her halfway and kissed her.

His erection poked hard against her belly, and her breasts slipped over the skin of his chest, and their kiss was instantly carnal and desperate and far, far hotter than the shower. Zoe arched up into Nick and kissed him with all the pent-up desire she’d had building inside her since the first moment she’d seen him waiting outside her great-aunt’s front door. He groaned again, deep in his throat. Zoe could feel the vibration of his voice in his lips, and it made her kiss him harder, wilder.

Nick. The perfect man, hers for this moment. When they broke for breath he smiled at her.

‘You don’t hold back when you go for it, do you?’ he said.

‘No, I don’t.’ She pulled him even closer and kissed him some more.

Nick manoeuvred them so that she was pressed back against the wall of the shower, pinned between the wet tiles and his hot wet body. Zoe lifted her knee and wrapped it around his hip. The position meant that the underside of his erection was in direct contact with her clitoris and the pleasure was so great she gasped into his mouth.

Since she’d lost her virginity at sixteen, just to get it out of the way, she hadn’t slept around, but she’d had her share of lovers. None of them had ever made her feel like this: powerful and powerless, and desperate with a need so big that she didn’t know if it could ever be fulfilled.

She tilted her hips so that she slid upwards along his slick length. Nick broke their kiss and, with one hand on her face, looked directly into her eyes. ‘Tell me what you feel,’ he said.

She moved again, sliding back down on him, and Nick made that guttural sound in his throat. His eyes were dilated, making them even darker than usual, and she knew that in one way she and he were feeling exactly the same thing. The same pleasure, the same desire, the same passion as the hot water pounded down on both of them.