Paradise County (24 page)

S
he kissed him gently, experimentally, her lips molding his with tender care, her head tilted to one side, her hands resting lightly on the wide expanse of his shoulders.

He made a slight, harsh sound. Then his tongue was in her mouth as his hands closed on either side of her waist, pulling her into the cradle of his spread legs. His tongue was hot, with a faint spicy taste, and his lips were hard as they slanted across hers, taking control. Alex thought that she would melt at the sheer heat of the kiss. Her arms wrapped around his neck. Quivers started at the base of her spine to race along her nerve endings. Her tongue met his, touched it, caressed it. His hands slid down from her waist to move up under her too-big coat and cup her behind. With her coat rucked up around her waist, he pulled her against him. She felt the size and hardness of him pressing against that part of her that already ached and wept for him. His hands squeezed her bottom, kneading, pulling her closer yet against the unmistakable evidence of his desire, and Alex went weak at the knees. He was kissing her like a man who was starving for the taste of her mouth.

Desperate for air, she freed her mouth from his and took a great, shuddering breath. Then she bent her head, pressing a string of kisses
along the unshaven line of his jaw until she gently captured his earlobe in her teeth.

“Wait a minute.” His hands were on her hipbones now, pushing her a little away from him. His voice was hoarse and faintly breathless, and his expression was both hungry and wary as he pulled his head back to look at her. “What is this?”

“A kiss?” she offered huskily, her gaze sliding once again to his mouth.

“Just a kiss?” His jaw was clenched, she saw, and his hands were holding on to her hipbones so hard they hurt.

“It can be anything you want it to be,” she whispered, her eyes bright with promise as she lifted her gaze to his. She was so hot for him she was melting inside, and tomorrow they said good-bye. Why shouldn’t she take what she wanted? When she had been so devoid of wanting anything for such a long time?

His eyes turned suddenly dark, dangerous, as he sucked in his breath.

“I want a lot.”

“So do I.”

He pulled her back toward him, slowly, nestling her between his legs. Her hands slid from his shoulders to link behind his neck. For a moment they just looked at each other. Then he kissed her again, drawing her tongue into his mouth, sucking on it. His mouth was hot, and wet, and devastating.

Alex shivered, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him back. She pressed her body against his, reveling in the feel of him against her, in the sheer magnificent size of him, in the hard evidence of his desire. His hands on her bottom pressed her closer yet. The heat and pressure of his body radiated to her through his jeans. She felt herself turning liquid with wanting, and moved sensuously against him. Undulating tremors of arousal raced down her thighs.

Alex stroked the warm skin at the nape of his neck. She ran her fingers through his short crisp hair. His puffy blue coat was preventing her from getting as close to him as she wanted. Her own coat was in the way too.

She pulled her mouth from his. His eyes opened, smoldering and heavy-lidded as they met hers. With his gaze following her every move, she began to slowly unbutton her coat. When she was finished, she slid out of it, letting it drop to the floor at her feet. The soft sound it made as it hit echoed through the quiet house.

“Don’t stop there.” He smiled faintly at her, but his eyes were ablaze.

“Your turn.” She tugged at his sleeve. Removing his hands from her bottom, he shrugged out of the coat. It fell with a heavy slithering sound. She stayed where she was, her pelvis pressed deliberately against the hard mound in his jeans, her hands running over the firm muscles of his chest through his flannel shirt.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice thick. Then he caught her by the waist and leaned forward to press his open mouth to her breast.

For a moment Alex stood unmoving. The moist heat of his mouth took a moment to penetrate the soft cashmere of her sweater and the thin silk of her bra. When it did her nipple instantly hardened and she gasped. Her hands moved to clasp the back of his head.

Her eyes closed. She stood there while he suckled her through her clothes, holding him against her, her toes curling in her boots at the sheer exquisite pleasure of it. When he shifted his attention to her other breast, though, she pulled away from him and stepped back.

“Come back here,” he said, again with the faint smile and burning eyes, and reached for her.

She shook her head at him. “Wait.”

With his eyes on her, she took off her expensive black cardigan, let it drop to the floor, and stood before him for a moment in her sleeveless black crewneck and slim khaki slacks. Then she pulled her sweater free at the waist and lifted it over her head before letting it, too, drop.

Her bra was a flimsy creation of white silk and lace, and her breasts filled the cups out nicely without being overly large. Her nipples, hardened by his attentions, pressed wantonly against round wet circles where his mouth had been. As he looked at her, a dark flush rose to stain his cheekbones and his breathing suspended.

“Pretty,” he said. “You going to take that off for me, too?”

Again she shook her head. “I’ll let you.”

He drew in his breath with an audible sound and stood up so abruptly that the barstool scooted backward. This time, when he reached for her, she went into his arms, loving the feel of his solid muscles beneath the soft flannel shirt, loving the hard strength of the arms around her, loving the sheer size of him and the way he kissed and how her body throbbed and burned for him… .

Even when things were good with Paul, she had never wanted him like this.

Joe stopped kissing her abruptly, his eyes glittering, his jaw set, and said, “Let’s take this upstairs.”

Then he swept her up in his arms and started walking with her, through the kitchen door into the front hall, up the wide staircase and along the narrow upstairs hall to her bedroom, all without so much as breaking a sweat. Alex clung to his neck, pressing short sweet kisses along the faintly rough underside of his jaw, tickling the already-proved-sensitive lobe of his ear with her tongue. Shouldering through the door, he pushed it closed behind them with a foot and looked down at her.

“I want you. God, I want you.” His voice was thick.

“So take me.”

He made a sound that was a cross between a groan and a growl and put her down on the bed. The covers were pulled back, and the sheets bore the same floral scent that she remembered from last night. But before the images of fear and flight could intrude he was coming down on top of her, fully clothed and heavy as a body bag full of wet cement, pressing her down into the mattress and kissing her with a torrid hunger that turned her brain to Jell-O and her body to fire.

There was no room in her thoughts for anything but him, and how he was making her feel.

He kissed her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, her ears. The slight roughness of his jaw rasped against her soft skin. His hands found her breasts, caressing them through her bra, running his thumbs over her nipples. Then his mouth followed his hands, and he suckled her through the fragile silk. Her still fully clothed legs parted for him instinctively, and he
settled himself between them, rocking against her, his body a solid ridge of granite as it both teased and promised. Then he shifted his weight so that he was lying alongside her, and slid a hand beneath the nape of her neck to position her mouth for his. His other hand was scalding hot as it slid along her rib cage and over her stomach to the fastening of her slacks. He freed the button, then eased the zipper down. The slight sound it made was, she thought, the most erotic thing she had ever heard.

He was still kissing her, long, slow kisses that made her head reel, as his hand delved inside her zipper, crept over her stomach, then slid beneath the lace-trimmed edge of her panties. His palm was flat against her stomach, his fingers gentle as they found and caressed the triangle of curls between her thighs. Then he pushed his fingers deeper, down between her legs, touching the most sensitive part of her, making her quiver and gasp into his mouth.

Just when she thought she couldn’t stand it anymore, when the sheer pleasure of it was making her loins contract and her thighs tremble, his hand slid lower yet, finding the opening that wept for him and wedging two fingers inside. His hand moved, in and out, in a steady, tantalizing rhythm, at the same time as he moved his thumb against the quivering nub nearby. Alex writhed desperately beneath that knowing hand, tugging at his shirt but too mindless with mounting desire to even so much as locate the buttons that held it together, wanting him naked and inside her more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.

Without warning his mouth lifted from hers, and his hand was withdrawn from her panties. Alex’s eyes blinked open, to find that he was propped on one elbow looking down at her. His eyes were so bright they looked feverish, and his skin was flushed. His gaze moved from her eyes, which she knew were heavy-lidded with desire, to her mouth, which was soft and wet from his kisses, down along her body, which was half-naked and open to his touch and quivering with desire for him, before returning once again to meet her eyes.

“Please,” she whispered, because she was burning for him, hotter than she could ever remember being, and quaking with need. If he did not take her soon she would die… .

“Please what?” His voice was thick and low. His hand found her breast, flattening over it. She was still wearing her bra. The thin damp silk did nothing to protect her sensitized nipple. The heat and pressure of his hand rubbing back and forth over her breast made her squirm. She watched the hungry, beseeching movement of her own hips with a heated fascination.

“Make love to me.” Just hearing herself say the words made her quiver. She was no prude, and no virgin either, but she had inhibitions just like any other normal woman and a good measure of pride, too, and she had never, ever thought that she would beg a man she scarcely knew to have sex with her.

But then, she had never, ever thought that she could want a man she scarcely knew like this.

“First you have to take off your bra for me.”

Hands trembling, she complied, sitting up and reaching around behind her back to undo the clasp, mesmerized by the knowledge that he was watching her every move. When the straps slid down her arms, baring her, his gaze was on her breasts, and, looking down, she tried to see herself through his eyes: her breasts were the size of oranges, round and firm, silky smooth and pale as milk and tipped with strawberry-pink nipples that were puckered and hard with arousal.

He looked at her breasts without touching her, then rolled off the side of the bed and came to his feet to stand towering over her as she sat in the middle of the bed. His gaze never left her as he swept the tangled covers from the bed, leaving only the fitted bottom sheet.

“Now take off your pants.”

“Joe… .” It was a husky plea. She wanted him so badly, and he was making her wait… .

“Do it.”

Alex did, first fumbling with her boots, pulling them off one by one and dropping them over the side of the bed, then sliding her slacks down her legs. The knowledge that he was watching her undress, telling her to undress, was so erotic that she was trembling. She dropped her khakis to the floor, and looked up to find his gaze moving hotly all over
her body, which was clad in nothing now but her tiny white bikini panties.

“Now those.”

Her lips parted as she fought to breathe. Then, slowly, she slid her fingers beneath the scraps of lace that rode her hipbones and eased them down her hips to reveal the ash-brown curls that he had caressed but not seen, then pushed the panties down her legs and, finally, took them off.

Naked now, sitting in the middle of the bed, she looked up at him. He was taking off his own clothes, his movements fast, jerky, his eyes glittering with passion, his jaw hard. He pulled off his boots, then, disdaining buttons, he pulled his shirt over his head, leaving her to admire the splendor of his wide, black-furred chest and broad, linebacker’s shoulders as he unzipped his pants and pushed them and his plain white jockey shorts down his legs, then kicked them aside. For an instant more he stood over her, mouthwateringly handsome, all black hair and bronzed skin and hard muscles, the evidence of his desire for her huge and swollen and jutting out at a straight, ninety-degree angle from his body.

Then he came down beside her. She lay back, gasping, trembling with passion, her eyes closing tight as he moved on top of her.

He was hot, heavy. The weight and friction of his body on her breasts and stomach and thighs were just what she craved. Her legs parted instantly, instinctively, to allow him to settle between them. She arched her hips up off the mattress in anticipation, needing him to take her now… .

But he didn’t. He caught her wrists, pulling her arms straight up over her head and holding them there, pinned to the mattress. He lowered his head, his mouth closing over a pebble-hard nipple, tugging it into his mouth, rubbing it with the rough wet surface of his tongue.

Alex moaned. His mouth moved to her other breast, repeating the exquisite torture. She moaned again.

She could feel his body with every nerve ending she possessed. His legs were hard and hot and abrasive between her trembling thighs; his chest and stomach were hard and hot and abrasive too as they moved against her breasts and belly and the slight protuberance of her femininity.
The enormous, scalding-hot part of him she ached for just barely touched her between her legs.

He was doing this deliberately, she thought, toying with her, tantalizing her, until he had her panting for him, melting like superheated plastic for him.

He had her pinned down so that she could scarcely move. She writhed beneath him, arching up off the mattress, pleading with him without words.

He lifted his head from her breasts.