Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) (11 page)

I could still say no, I thought, even as I led Mark down the hall between our rooms. With extra flair, my hips swayed seductively as we went. It was the walk of my ancestors, of generations of women before me, enticing their mates to follow. A wordless sign of availability. For all the sophistication of speech and modern pleas for communication between the sexes, body language still spoke the loudest.

The tremors in my stomach weren’t so easy to interpret. Anticipation, fear and exhilaration tied themselves in knots there. I wasn’t someone who could go from bed to bed or man to man with reckless and frequent abandon. I had turned him down before—why was this morning so different?

The adrenaline for one—I was still bathing in its after-glow, in that period where the heady pound of it had subsided and before my body fell into spiraling withdrawal. But it wasn’t only the adrenaline lending me strength and courage that had prompted my yes.

It was Mark himself—the totality of him. That sweet body alone or those liquid eyes weren’t enough in themselves to convince a
yes
from me. But the way he’d responded this morning by making the threat to those I loved
his
responsibility, too, without doubt or hesitation, just moving with the instinct to protect us all—that resonated to my core. That gave meaning and intimacy to an act that anyone—or anything from grasshoppers to mice to elephants—could participate in.

I turned into my bedroom and closed the door behind Mark. With an impish waggle of my eyebrows, I locked the door.

He stalked up behind me, and I felt the solid presence of him, looming and alien in my room, even before he laid a hand over mine on the knob.

“Afraid I might take off?” he whispered over my shoulder, his lips beside my ear. My hair ruffled in his breath.

Oh God. Out there the thought of him being in here had been a little wild, a little exciting. In here, where the air was heavy with anticipation and spreading passion, all my schoolgirl doubts and insecurities flooded over me. For a moment I was afraid I needed a locked door to keep
me
in.

Then he stepped in closer, the inner thigh of one leg against the outer thigh of mine, his right arm snaking under my breasts, lifting them slightly as he drew me into his chest. His left arm wrapped around my waist, pulling my hips to his. Instead of warding me away, the hard length of him anchored my resolve.

“Would you…take off?” I asked.

“Never.”

The conviction in his tone startled me. I could almost believe it carried a deeper, lasting meaning . Almost. But I wasn’t that naïve. It was bedroom talk, little of which meant anything beyond the desire to keep a partner saying
yes
for a few minutes more. Fleeting assurance. Fleeting promises.

“Believe me?”

I nodded, because it was the answer he needed to not interrupt this moment between us.

“Prove it.”

By unlocking the door he meant.

“Happy to. If you’ll be happy when we have a baby gorilla crawling into bed with us.”

“Oh,” The hand beneath my left breast turned up to cup it. Two fingers of the other slid under the waistband of my shorts. “I was thinking this first time we might be alone. I seem to perform better that way.” His hand stopped roving. “Not that I’ve ever done it with someone else there with us. Well, not a baby. At least not a baby gorilla.”

“So what else
have
you had in bed with you?”

“College. Frat parties. Who remembers?”

I stretched my neck around so I could see his face. His dark eyes were laughing. “Kidding,” he confessed. “I was in a House that was mainly geeky Greeks. A wild night for us was renting an action movie and ordering in pizza.”

I was pretty sure that wasn’t the truth either. No reason to press it, though. Not when he’d only be here another week. This was the very definition of a fling—no care for the past or the future, only for the now. The fact he was a doctor alleviated the only real worry for me to care about his past partners and history.

The laughter in his eyes dissolved into a smoked sultriness as he moved the hand at my breast to the top button of my waist-cropped camo shirt. He worked his way down each button, then slid a slow hand up the thin skin over my ribs until it was squeezing the mound of my breast. I tipped my shoulder into it, both for his pleasure and mine.

The hand at my waist crept up to my other breast. With twice-filled palms, he massaged them, running his thumbs over their peaks as I melted against him. It had been far too long since I’d been touched so intimately and never since I had been handled so expertly. He was neither mauling me roughly the way some men grabbed and pulled and abused a woman’s sensitive breasts, nor was he afraid of them the way some men were on their first confrontations with a woman’s naked chest.

My nipples responded, growing full and erect, and when his thumbs stopped circling and began thrumming those hard nubs, bolts of lightning shot directly from them deep into the cusp between my thighs. I gasped and clenched.

Low behind me I felt him leap, hard and insistent. I swayed against him and he growled in my ear.

Trailing fire behind it, his right hand traced a line across my tender skin from breast to waist where my shorts snapped together. A quick yank and they parted, unzipping halfway on their own from the force. A quick pull and they unzipped completely. The hand working its way between the open zipper paused when it touched the close-cropped strip of hair there. I heard the sharp intake of Mark’s breath loud against my neck, surprised, I guessed, at finding no other feminine garment between his hand and me.

“I was in a hurry,” I whispered.

“No complaints here.” The husk in his voice tingled through me, adding another layer to the desire that flooded me, centering now on the destination of that broad hand that slid lower and lower, till my arch of bone cupped perfectly in its palm and its middle finger arrived triumphantly at my clit.

I squirmed, biting back my shriek at its touch. His finger lay still on top of me. Unmoving. How could he be so expert with my breasts, yet so clueless here? I bucked against him, a silent plea , moving rhythmically between the hard finger in front and the hard length of him behind.

When I heard his own strangled moan, I realized there was nothing clueless about him. He was baiting me, enjoying the fallout from my frustration.

I was panting now, that finger maddeningly close. I swung my right hand from where it had been gripping the back of his iron-hard thigh, catching the back of his hand desperately with my own, miming the movement I needed from him
now
.

He obliged at last, the press of his finger on me keeping rhythm with the beat of the pulse in his erection behind me. I caught my breath and squirmed, then, still holding breath, squirmed some more.

The beat increased, and every unique sensation suddenly resolved into one—the orgasm built and built as he panted into my ear until it speared through me, peaking with familiar fireworks.

“Uhh…uhh.” I moaned with conscious restraint, not yet comfortable enough with this man to give full utterance to the acknowledgement of how easily he could rock my world. But I couldn’t stop the sway of my head against his bare chest as I pitched over the peak before beginning the long, shuddering slide down the other side.

I took a moment to compose myself as Mark held me pinned yet to him, until a hard prod from behind reminded me this was a team sport.

Not that I would have forgotten for long. I was more than curious to see what lay behind the flap of his shorts. Would it match the rest of him—comfortably large, comfortably muscled, comfortably built? And could I manipulate it with the same ease with which he manipulated me?

I was anxious to find out. In my own way.

Reaching up and back so my breast stretched under his hand, I caught the nape of Mark’s neck and rubbed my cheek against the light stubble of his beard that had grown in since yesterday.

“That was…nice,” I murmured.

“Nice, huh? Yeah, well, I know something even nicer.”

“Nicer than this?” Rolling in his arms, I came front-to-front with him. The points of my breasts smooshed against his bared chest, and the hand that had pleasured me
there
spread now across the firm globes of my butt. Bending my knees. I lowered myself with excruciating slowness, enjoying the taste of his most lickable chest, moiling first one hard-nubbed pap and then the other, nipping and sucking at them like tiny appetizers to the entrée to come.

He replanted his feet as I turned to his centerline, licking a trail of anticipation to the edge of the strips of bandaging that swaddled him. Looking up at him with my most wicked smile, I knelt before him, the feel of his strong hands a tingle of electricity as they tracked their way up to my shoulders.

Hooking a finger in the waistband of his shorts, I tugged. Mark gasped as the living thing captured behind the zipper twitched in anticipation. Parts of me already recovered twitched in return. I slid the first button then the second from their holes in the double-buttoned band, leaning my head in closer to better see the task at hand.

Mark’s fingers dug into my shoulders as I tweezed the zipper tag between my fingers. The khaki bush shorts outlined his eagerness for me to get on with the task. Inversely proportional to that mounting desire, I began an excruciatingly slow pull, unzipping him millimeter by millimeter. His legs, to either side of my head, trembled. What glimpses I had behind the parting cloth told me that, like me, Mark had been sleeping in the nude and had stepped hastily into his shorts before running out to confront the morning’s threats.

I tugged down the last millimeter, expecting him to burst free. Mark even twerked his hips to help, but he was caught in the folds behind the right flap of the gaping shorts. Better anyway, because I needed those shorts off of him. Completely.

It was the work of a moment between us, and the shorts went sliding down his long, lean legs. I had to back my face away when, sprung free at last, his cock levered out. One look and I was pretty sure those shorts wouldn’t have held it much longer.

I gulped a bit at the unexpected length, unsure how—even if—I would be able to accommodate him. But I was damn sure I was going to give it my best try. Especially when it waved like a challenge in front of me.

I locked my eyes to Mark’s as I stretched out my tongue, licking the sensitive underside from mid-point to tip. I liked the way he shuddered when I closed my lips around him, licking my tongue across him before settling in to suck.

My hands sought the backs of his thighs, enjoying the cords of hard muscle before working their way up to his firm, flat flanks. I let my hands play there a moment, roaming and kneading that tight butt that kept getting tighter by the minute.

Then I drew him close.

His moan started in his eyes. They flashed with a bright blaze before deepening into a dark lust that his throat gave voice to.

I wanted to hear more.

Closing my eyes, I hugged his hips to me as I nipped and nibbled my way down the length of him, swallowing as much of him as I could manage. The pulse of him beat in the warm pocket of my throat as I clung to his hips to keep us both balanced.

He raised one hand to the back of my head, fisting my hair as he undulated against my mouth. Muscles deep inside me clutched in rhythm to every beat, every suck.

Then he was shaking against me, in me, his moans turning to groans as he ground against me, then into a growl as he fountained within.

Half-choking, I nevertheless held him inside, letting him contract naturally from my throat before backing away and letting him slide from the circle of my lips.

Holding him yet in the circle of my arms, I lifted my eyes back up to his. They were slitted now, still shrouded with ecstasy. As they cleared and his breathing steadied, his voice came back to him. “That was… nice,” he murmured.

“Nice, huh?” I smiled seductively. “Well, I know something even nicer.”

He grinned with renewed anticipation. I liked that enthusiasm—enthusiasm my own body echoed, loudly.

“Unfortunately, it’ll have to wait for later.” I used the brace of his arm to help me stand. “Right now, we have hungry babies to feed.”

Suddenly, I was thinking how short a time this next week was going to be.