Take It Down (14 page)

Her eyes closed and her hands found a steady perch to hold on to when they landed on his shoulders. His breath tickled her body. His hands wandered, sweeping across her breasts, tweaking her nipples, sending chills up and down her spine. But she couldn’t concentrate on that. Not when the moist heat of his mouth was so close to the aching source of her desire.

His mouth brushed against the curls covering her sex. She wanted him to spread her open, to touch her and put them both out of their misery.

Instead, he asked her a question that had her groaning with disbelief, even as the words reverberated inside her.

“I don’t suppose you have a condom in your bag of tricks over there.”

“Why would I have a condom?” she gasped. “I’m on the Pill.”

“Not the same.”

Pulling out of his hold, she said, “Are you saying you think I’m going to give you something?”

“No, I’m saying we don’t know each other.”

With a groan, she collapsed onto the ground beside him, knowing that he was right. Neither of them had come into the jungle expecting to jump the other’s bones.

“Damn it.” Her words held none of the frustration she actually felt.

“My sentiments exactly. Although…” With a feral smile that had another spurt of desire rushing through her, Zane dropped to all fours and crawled his way toward her. “I’m sure we can think of something to do…to tide us over until we can get back to the resort.”

Elle’s eyes narrowed. There were two things that her brain snatched from the statement he’d just made. One, he had every intention of continuing what they’d just started once they got back to the resort. This wasn’t a one-off moment-of-opportunity kind of thing. Apparently, it was more like the vacation fling that everyone seemed to think she’d come to the resort for in the first place.

She flipped that around in her brain for a minute and realized she was perfectly fine with that. She wasn’t sure once with Zane Edwards would be enough anyway.

Two, he didn’t intend to leave her aching and aroused in the middle of the jungle.

That she could also live with. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d be
able
to live if he didn’t finish what they’d started—one way or another.

Her legs had sprawled at odd angles when she’d fallen to a heap in frustration. She didn’t bother to move them now. She’d never been one of those women who was embarrassed to let a man see her naked. She was confident enough in her body and her sexuality. Besides, she made a point of never stripping in front of a man if she didn’t know one-hundred percent that he wanted to sleep with her. She figured once they were to that point, it really didn’t matter if she had a few extra bumps and lumps—although she didn’t, at least not yet.

Zane prowled between her open thighs, grasping a leg to pull it up so he could run his lips down the inside of her thigh.

She let him mold her, moving her where he wanted, because she trusted that whatever he did would feel fantastic.

And she wasn’t wrong.

His mouth closed over the weeping center of her sex. Her body bucked at the contact, the electric current of pleasure driving her hips off the ground and her flesh tighter against his mouth.

His tongue flicked across her clit. Back and forth in a maddening rhythm that just wasn’t enough. He teased and tortured her, she couldn’t have said for how long. She was mindless with need, her body drawn so tight she was ready to snap.

And still, he wouldn’t let her come. He’d take her right to the edge and then back off, blowing across her skin in a frustrating caress until she dropped away from the edge again.

She whimpered, a sound she was absolutely certain she’d never made in her life. And then she begged. Incoherent words that she hoped he couldn’t decipher, but knew to the core of her being he understood.

At one point, she reached for him, trying to pull him up her body so that she could touch him, feel him, drive his erection into her and end her misery.

He wouldn’t let her.

Instead, he distracted her, anchoring his mouth back over her clit and driving a finger deep inside her. It was too much and she was too close. Her body did exactly what he wanted it to, exploding around him as the band of arousal he’d wound so expertly finally snapped.

The world faded away, even the bright sunlight behind her closed eyelids going black. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. All she could do was feel the pleasure as wave after wave of it washed over her.

Seconds, minutes, hours. She didn’t know how long it took for her brain to begin working again. Probably not as long as she thought, though, since both of them lay on the ground, their chests heaving in unison.

“Holy shit.”

He chuckled, a sound that had strain running all through it.

Rolling onto her side, Elle propped her head on her hand and watched him. His eyes were closed, his jaw tight with the effort of just lying there. His hands were fisted at his sides, handfuls of earth oozing through his fingers.

And his erection strained against the damp cloth of the shorts he still wore.

Her mouth watered.

She wanted to see him, feel him, know him.

Leaning down, Elle brushed her mouth across the side of his neck, enjoying the way his pulse leaped beneath her lips. When she was close to his ear, she whispered, “My turn.”

His body pulsed beneath her. Really, that was the only word she could think of to describe it. She could feel the desire he was holding back surfing just beneath his skin. It was a living, breathing thing. And they were both slaves to it.

Brushing her palms down his chest, she went to work on his waistband. The button popped easily, but the waterlogged zipper didn’t want to move. She was about to give up when he said, “Get it down or I’m going to rip it apart. That’ll be hard to explain when we get back.” His words were guttural, telling her just how close to the edge he really was. She had no doubt at all that he meant what he said. Having her touch him was more important at that moment than anything else—including having to explain an embarrassing situation.

Power surged through her. He wanted her that much. With renewed conviction, she wrestled the stubborn zipper open, tugging the teeth apart.

He wore nothing beneath. Elle wondered if that was standard operating procedure for this man and then thought it probably was. If he’d been thinking of sex, he would have had a condom.

His erection sprang free, the throbbing length slippery with his desire.

“I’m sorry, it won’t take much,” he pushed out between clenched teeth as he watched her watching him.

She ran a single finger down the length of him, relishing the way he jumped into her touch, wanting more.

“Damn, Zane, who asked you to be Superman? I didn’t. Do you think it bothers me that you drove me insane and managed to barely hold it together yourself? You just gave me the best orgasm of my life. I really don’t care if it takes you three seconds or three hours, as long as you enjoy what I’m about to do to you.”

She dipped toward him. Her hair fell around her face. The ends feathered across his skin, making his stomach muscles contract.

She ran the flat edge of her tongue along the entire length of his erection, enjoying the way he breathed out “sweet lor—” before his voice dropped off into an incoherent gurgle when she opened her mouth and took him deep inside.

He was big, filling her mouth in a way that made her internal muscles clench. What she’d give to feel him moving inside her. Later. Soon.

For now, she contented herself with the texture of him beneath her tongue. He tasted of salt and man. Smelled of musk and sex. He was hard and soft all at once, silk-covered steel.

She sucked. He writhed beneath her, grasping the back of her head and urging her nearer.

She teased him, using the wet heat of her mouth to get him close, before backing away and leaving him restless. His eyes promised retribution, a payment in kind that she would relish.

“Witch,” he breathed as he reached for her, pulling her up and crushing her mouth with his own. His large palm engulfed her smaller hand, guiding her until her fingers were wrapped tight around his shaft. “Finish me,” he said. The words were supposed to be an order from the calm, capable, unflappable Officer Edwards. But Elle heard the desperation beneath them. Remembered begging him for her own release minutes before.

She was nicer. She wouldn’t make him beg.

Watching as ecstasy suffused his face was almost as amazing as feeling him pulse and explode beneath her fingers. His body strained against the whipcord of pleasure as it pounded through him. His fingers clenched against her body, one hand buried deep in her hair, the other anchored securely on her hip. His hold might have hurt, if she’d noticed. But she was focused solely on him, on the moment his guard was completely down, and she could see behind the mask to the man beneath.

He collapsed to the ground, dragging her with him.

Sunlight streamed across her body. Lazy warmth stole through her. And her limbs suddenly seemed weighted down, too heavy to move. Her eyelids, too.

She let it all go, falling asleep in his arms. Something she hadn’t let herself do in a very long time.

“YOUR SKIN’S GOING TO burn.” Zane’s deep voice called her back to the land of the living. His fingers played across her skin, making random patterns.

Without opening her eyes, she smiled and said, “I don’t burn. My Nana was Italian. I have Mediterranean blood running through my veins.”

His fingertips brushed over the ends of her hair, “So where did the red come from?”

“Nice ’n Easy?”

His other hand strayed to the curls at the juncture of her thighs, calling her a liar without saying a word.

The smile on her face spread. “My Irish grandpa.” She cracked her eyes open, twisting her head so she could look up into his face. “Lucky it wasn’t reversed, huh? Pasty skin and curly black hair probably wouldn’t have been so pretty.”

“Pretty? Yes. You? No. Somehow that kind of ice-princess beauty just wouldn’t have suited you. You’re…”

“A pain in the ass?”

“
Explosive
was what I was actually thinking, but yeah,
pain in the ass
works, too.”

She reached behind her and grabbed the first thing her hand landed on, her discarded bra, and lobbed it at him.

Scrambling away, he scooped up his damp shorts and put them back on. Snapping them up as he walked away.

But he didn’t get far. He stopped next to the bag that held all of her stuff.

He stared down at her unfinished painting and Elle tried desperately not to squirm. She wanted to bolt up and snatch it away, but something inside stopped her.

“Now, this is beautiful,” he said, glancing back at her over his shoulder.

“It isn’t finished.”

“Looks perfect to me,” he said, reaching down as if to follow the lines with his fingertip.

“What do you know?” Pushing to her feet in one motion, she walked toward him, swatting his hand away from the still-wet canvas before he could smudge it. “No touching.”

His arm snaked around her waist, pulling her tight into his body. “I hope you don’t really mean that,” he growled against her neck. The rumble of his words echoed through her body, igniting the embers of the fire their love play hadn’t truly extinguished.

She’d come. Rather forcefully, if she was honest. Satisfaction should be rolling through her right now, along with the need for a longer nap.

Instead, her blood hummed just beneath her skin. She wanted him again. Right now. In the sand, on the rocks, in the grass. Wet, dry, she didn’t care. Elle hadn’t had enough of Zane Edwards.

And that scared the shit out of her.

He was the kind of man she always stayed away from. Always with a capital
A.
He was controlling, overbearing and demanding. Honorable, beautiful, the type who put everyone else’s safety way before his own. He was guilt ridden—about what, she didn’t know, but she recognized the signs well enough. She’d lived with men who blamed themselves for so many things beyond their control.