Silver Bella (5 page)

He was breathing hard, his eyes a brilliant green and his skin flushed with excitement. Her own lungs felt like there was a metal band constricting them and heat radiated throughout her body with furnace-like intensity.

He leaned forward, his hands braced against his thighs like a man who’d been running hard and fast. “That damn near got out of hand.”

“If that was only a near miss, what does really out of hand feel like?”

He did that groan thing again and she sort of slid down the truck until she was barely standing.

He said, “Come inside and find out.”

Chapter Four

“I can’t.”

“You’re not ready?” He sounded incredulous, and after that kiss, he should be.

So she corrected him. “I can’t walk.”

He didn’t laugh, even though it should have been funny. She should be joking, but she wasn’t.

He silently stepped forward, then picked her up and swung her over one shoulder just like he’d said he wanted to do the night before. He’d gotten halfway to the house before she realized they had an audience and it wasn’t a silent one.

Cowboys stood around laughing like hyenas on speed.

One of them called out, “Hey, boss, you bringing home a woman or a sack of potatoes?”

“Do you feel like a sack of potatoes?” Jake demanded, actually sounding worried about the possibility.

She put her hands on his backside so she could lift her torso and look the cowboys over right side up. “No. I feel like a martini…but I’m both shaken and stirred.”

Very, very stirred. The presence of an audience did not lower the level of pheromones swirling in the air around them one bit, or the sensations pouring through her most sensitive places because of them.

He laughed at that, his chuckle low and sexy, and she found herself grinning. She liked his laugh.

The cowboy who’d spoken tipped his hat at her. “Ma’am.”

Another said, “Shorty, you maybe just might have to give up your name to half-pint there.”

Though she heard the humor in the cowboy’s voice, that got rid of her grin real fast. “The next one who calls me
short
is going to learn all about what my brother taught me after assassin training in the Special Forces.”

Joshua hadn’t trained to be an assassin but these grinning loons didn’t need to know that. And she might be little, but she carried a mighty punch.

Joshua
had
taught her that.

Another cowboy laughed out loud. “She’s all right, boss.”

“I like a woman with spirit,” another one said.

“Get your own,” Jake growled before sweeping into the house and kicking the big door shut behind them.

“
Señor
Jake, what is this you are doing?”

The woman’s voice reached Bella and she wanted to shout out her frustration. Wasn’t there privacy, even in the house? Then she remembered the sister and gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted to do was meet her favorite author when all she could think about was getting the woman’s brother into the nearest bed.

Jake said something in Spanish and the woman clucked her tongue, then responded in the same language.

Bella made out the word for
sister
and
bad
, but the rest of it was incomprehensible. She’d only had one semester of Spanish in high school. She got a glimpse of a living room decorated with simplicity for comfort, lots of hardwood floors and then some stairs. Jake’s broad shoulder jolted her stomach as he took the stairs two at a time.

He carried her straight into a bedroom and shut the door.

She assumed it was his, but at that point, it could have been the housekeeper’s and she would have offered to change the sheets afterward.

He dumped her on the bed and she bounced. “Now I feel like a sack of potatoes,” she teased.

He grimaced. “Sorry.”

She sat up in the middle of the big mattress. “What happened to your sister?”

“Nothing.”

“I heard the word
bad
.”

“Eva thinks I’ll come to a bad end if I go around carrying beautiful women over my shoulder.”

“Oh.”

“Lise flew out early for her research trip,” he said with the air of a man admitting some deep, dark sin.

Which surprised her, so it took a second for the import of his words to fully register.

They were alone
.

The hallelujah chorus was going off in her head while her body continued melting from the inside out, her desire not in the least abated by her tummy-jolting ride up the stairs.

“I didn’t lie to you. I thought she was going to be here,” he said, mistaking her silence for accusation.

“I didn’t think you had.”

“Oh.” He unbuttoned his flannel shirt, skimming it off and tossing it on a nearby chair. “Good.”

Her sweater came off in one swift move over her head, leaving her in a pair of tight jeans and a black lace bra.

His hands froze on the hem of his T-shirt and he said a word that made her ears burn. “Honey, you are one gorgeous woman.”

For no reason she could understand, his comment made her feel self-conscious and she didn’t do anything about taking off her pants.

He wasn’t so reticent. His black T-shirt went first, revealing a chest bronzed from working in the sun, with a light dusting of hair and rippling with muscle. Then he sat on the chair he’d tossed his shirt onto so he could take off his boots.

She was digesting the fact that men could have sexy feet when his jeans went the way of the shirt and her heart stopped beating. His legs were covered with hair, so different from her waxed smoothness that she could just imagine how they were going to feel against her own.

Him on top of her, their legs entwined.

Suddenly, her jeans were too constricting, but she still couldn’t quite make herself take them off. So she kicked off her platforms instead and the tight denim of her jeans rubbed against highly sensitized flesh when she moved.

Then her breath suspended in her throat as he pulled off the nondescript black boxers.

Oh, wow.

She felt like crossing herself. “You’re awfully big, aren’t you?”

Or was it just her perspective? After all, she’d only ever seen a naked and erect penis in an erotic woman’s magazine a friend of hers had given her as a gag gift for her twenty-first birthday. Even the male strippers at the show she’d once been taken to had kept their G-strings on. She’d seen lots of male ass, but this was way different.

His laugh sounded gargled.

“It moves when you laugh. That’s cool.”

“I thought virgins were supposed to be shy.”

“I don’t like being average.”

For some reason, that cracked him up again. He was still laughing when he pushed her back on the bed and his lips landed against hers.

It was just like it had been outside, only more.

His hot, excited body was covering hers and the hair on his chest tickled her nipples through the black lace.

“I want you naked,” he said against her lips and then tasted her with his tongue.

She didn’t get a chance to answer before he was undoing her pants and pushing them down her thighs, all the while wreaking erotic havoc with his mouth on hers. The pants were tight and her panties went with them. What should have made her feel vulnerable only succeeded in making her feel incredibly sexy. She’d never been naked with a man before, but she had the sneaking feeling that if she had had several lovers, being this way with Jake Barton would still feel different.

His hands were busy at her back, unhooking her bra and then pulling it from her body. This time he stopped kissing her long enough to look.

And, man, did he make looking feel like another form of foreplay.

His gaze roamed over her and everywhere it touched, goose bumps of desire formed on her skin. She was shivering uncontrollably by the time he reached out to gently ruffle the damp curls between her legs.

Hair was sensitive. She hadn’t known that, but the light touch went all the way to her core.

She shuddered. “That feels good.”

“It gets better.”

She didn’t doubt it.

He was leaning over her when he slipped his forefinger between the very slick lips of her vulva and pressed against her straining clitoris. Minishocks went all along her body. It was so incredibly intimate.

An intimacy she hadn’t trusted to other men and maybe that’s what made her body ultrasensitive, but she felt on the verge of climax and he’d barely touched her.

His finger moved just so, this way and that, a circle here…a dip there, pressing in and releasing the pressure, each tiny movement bringing impossible pleasure closer and closer. It didn’t happen like this.

She knew her own body.

Climax took effort, but his touch was drawing forth a response she hadn’t known she was capable of.

And then she was arching off the bed, screaming as she had the first orgasm sparked by another person in her life. His hand rubbed, drawing out the pleasure until she grabbed his wrist and begged him to stop. He did, keeping his hand there, cupped protectively over her mound.

Her eyes had shut with the first convulsion and now she opened them, wondering how he was going to react to a woman who came before they’d even gotten serious about foreplay.

He looked stunned and…very pleased.

“You’re amazing, Bella.”

She licked her lips. They were so dry. So was her throat.

“I’m thirsty,” she croaked.

He reached out and brushed her cheek. “I’ll get you something.”

He came back seconds later with a glass of water and she drank it down like a frat boy guzzling beer. She’d never been so thirsty. Some of the water spilled and he leaned forward to lick it up, but once his tongue touched her chest, they both forgot the water.

The empty glass tumbled from her hand as she fell back against the bed, unbelievably excited again by the rasping of his tongue against one turgid nipple.

“Jake, please…”

He lifted his head. “What do you want, baby?”

“I don’t know.” Yes, she did. “I want to touch you.”

His eyes widened like she’d surprised him, but he shook his head. “If I let you touch me now, I’m going to come before I ever get inside you.”

“Oh, no!” she wailed, remembering something insurmountable. “You can’t come inside me. I’m not on the pill.”

She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw things.

She wanted—

“I’ve got condoms.”

“You do?” Of course he did. He wasn’t a twenty-six-year-old virgin and pathetically unprepared to change that status.

“Yeah.” He smiled, looking smug again. “I’m even wearing one. Didn’t you notice?”

She hadn’t, but she looked now.

His big erection was covered in an almost transparent layer of protection. He must have put it on when he went into the bathroom to get her a glass of water.

She threw her arms around his neck and started kissing him, filled with gratitude for his forethought and a heady dose of excitement. He responded with all the enthusiasm she could want, his mouth opening, letting her tongue inside.

Oh, man, he tasted good. She’d French-kissed men before. She’d even enjoyed it, but never like this.

He tasted like he belonged to her and even if that was an illusion, she liked it.

She kept kissing him, running her hands up and down his body, touching him everywhere she could reach. He jumped when she touched the back of his scrotum between his legs, then he thrust his body toward her, spreading his legs so she could touch him some more. She did and it felt as if the hardness nestled against her was growing, but that could not be possible.

He pressed her thighs apart with one knee and a second later she felt the blunt tip of his erection at her opening.

She tilted up toward him, but though his head slid inside her, that was all he would let her have.

She wanted all of him inside her.

Now.

She grabbed his butt and pulled, but he resisted.

“I want you,” she practically shouted.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” He touched her again, this time exploring all her secrets. “This is your first time, honey. We can’t rush it.”

Yes, they could, but the words wouldn’t come out. Her jaw was locked in indescribable pleasure as one of his fingers slipped inside.

She pressed against his hand.

He moved his hand, possessing her in a way she wanted his whole body to do and she forced strained throat muscles to work. “That feels incredible. So intimate and wonderful, but I want it
all
, Jake.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” His voice sounded even more ragged than hers.

“You won’t.” How could anything hurt when it felt this good?

“But…”

“Jake, I’m twenty-six.”

He shook his head, sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip while his fingers continued to make love to her and his body moved convulsively against her. “Age isn’t a barrier to pain your first time.”