Take It Down (17 page)

“I want you to look at me when I touch you. I want to see your eyes when I slide home. I want to watch them glaze over when you come. I want you to know who’s fucking you. Not some guy from tonight. Not some guy from home.”

With a growl in the back of his throat, Zane ripped her top down to her waist. She hadn’t bothered with a bra, so when his lips latched on to her breast, there was nothing but heat and the moist suction of his mouth.

His hand kneaded the other side. His fingers pinched and pulled at one erect nipple while his teeth worried the other. She felt an answering tug deep inside her body, an ache that was quickly building to unbearable.

Her fingers buried in his hair, the silky strands of deep brown almost black in the darkness. They were soft against her skin, a contrast to the rough play of his hands over her body. His fingers were calloused. She wondered briefly what had caused them, certainly not playing with his guns. He was a man who wouldn’t balk at hard work, if it needed to be done. He could get down and dirty if necessary.

She liked that about him. Hoped he was willing to get a little down and dirty with her.

Unwilling to sit passively by while he played her like a well-tuned fiddle, Elle yanked at his shirt, not caring if the seams ripped, as long as it revealed some skin.

The minute she’d torn his shirt off over his head, Zane went to work on her capris. He opened the zipper, but instead of pulling them off, he let his fingers play into the open V he’d revealed. He reached beneath the material, filling his hands with the curves of her ass, arching her body and pulling her aching sex closer to him. The bulge of his own arousal pressed against her hip, a tantalizing temptation. She squirmed in his hold, hoping to get him to shift and press it against her. She wanted to feel him, to rub against him and drive them both crazy. But he wouldn’t let her.

His teeth nipped at her throat, sending the pulse point there racing.

But two could play. Lord, she wanted to play with him.... She reached for him, intent on yanking open his fly and filling her palm with the heat of him. But he pulled away from her, just out of reach.

She looked up into his face. Shadows shifted across his features, sharpening the blades of his cheekbones and making his lips appear fuller. She wanted to kiss them. And she wouldn’t let him tease her this way. With a surge of her body, Elle rose beneath him. Her fingers wrapped around the waistband of his jeans and wouldn’t let go.

She made quick work of his fly, but knew she’d never get the tight denim down his thighs unless he let her. Scrambling out from under him, Elle quickly shed her own pants and panties, shoving them into a pile on the floor that she’d deal with later. Much later.

She knelt on the bed; her thighs spread apart, her hands on her hips, a smirk touching her lips.

“Lose ’em, mister.”

She’d never been shy with her body. When your grandmother was a nude model and you live in a house with three men, modesty just doesn’t seem to have a place to survive. She’d sketched her first nude when she was barely seventeen. The woman had been overweight, with sagging breasts and the rounded belly of a mother who’d borne several children. She’d love to sketch Zane, the way his bones and muscles connected, the sinewy grace beneath that hard exterior. The fluidity that spoke to a man who knew his body and knew exactly what to do with it.

With quick precise motions, Zane shed his clothes, draping them over the arm of a chair instead of throwing them to the floor as she had. She probably should be grateful he hadn’t stopped to fold them. At least, it gave her a moment to stare.

His erection jutted proudly from his body. A single bead of moisture glistened at the tip. Her tongue darted out to lick across her lips and his cock jerked in response. A fun little trick she’d have to remember for later.

With a surge of muscles and strength, Zane reached across the bed and pulled her back down beneath him. His hold on her was anything but soft. The intensity in his gaze sent a burst of uneasiness through her that was immediately replaced with a moan of desire when he clamped his mouth to hers again, his tongue plundering her in a way that only made her hungrier for the feel of him deep inside.

His arm hooked beneath her knee and pulled her thigh up into the air. Her body was open and exposed to him, hot, wet, ready.

The head of his penis scraped against the opening of her body. Her muscles quaked against the strain of holding back. She wanted him. She wanted it all. But he wouldn’t give it to her.

Elle fumbled blindly in the nightstand beside the bed. She’d quietly asked the concierge for condoms this afternoon, feeling more like a naughty teenager now than she had even when she was a naughty teenager. She grabbed a handful, letting the others rain back down until she held a single one between her fingers.

With her teeth, she tore savagely into it, letting the broken foil flutter to the floor. Her other hand found his hot flesh wedged between them. He was so close to her sex that the back of her hand brushed against her own wet heat drawing a hiss of pleasure from between her lips.

Her fingers stroked up and down his length. She spread the moisture she found there over the head of him, enjoying the way his body jerked as she played across the sensitive tip.

“I told you I’d find the right spot,” she whispered, her voice husky with satisfaction.

“This isn’t a game,” he growled. His eyes, suddenly smoky and dark, held her captive. For a moment, she worried he could see straight to her soul, straight to the vulnerable place he was building inside her. She needed this to be a game.

But she knew that it wasn’t and, no matter how hard she tried to make it that, it never would be.

Elle tore her eyes from him, concentrating on the condom she rolled slowly over his cock. He was hard and hot and her body throbbed with the need to have him fill her. But she still found herself whispering the question she never should have let out into the universe. “Then what is it?”

Because she was so afraid of his answer.

He plunged deep inside, invading her body and forcing a cry of pleasure from her that she’d had no intention of giving up. With smooth, long strokes, he claimed her, and she couldn’t find the strength to care about the answer. She wanted him to take her. She wanted to be his.

He tortured them both. Pulling out slowly before sliding back in. Over and over again, Zane brought her to the brink of ecstasy, only to steal it away before she could grasp it with both hands.

Her body writhed beneath him, matching him stroke for stroke and silently begging him to put them both out of their misery. And still, he pushed her on for more. Her hands grappled against his sweat-slicked skin, trying to find a purchase that would force him closer and hold him to her forever.

Her muscles quivered with strain and anticipation.

Pleasure flooded her system, her mind spinning out into empty space, unable to grasp anything but the relentless need he was building inside. A final claiming stroke vaulted her into the strongest orgasm of her life. She’d heard women talk about seeing stars. She’d thought they’d lied. She’d been wrong.

Light burst behind her eyelids. Her fingernails dug into his flesh and raked shakily down his back, trying to find something to hold on to in the middle of the storm.

With the half a brain cell that still functioned, Elle registered Zane’s own grunt of release, the way his body shuddered above her as he finally let go. The friction was sensational against her contracting muscles, pulling that last fraction of pleasure out of the moment.

Damn, he was good. But then she’d known he would be. Zane Edwards was the type of man who wouldn’t settle for mediocre. He excelled at everything he did—including sex.

He collapsed beside her, careful not to crush her beneath the weight of his body. She wouldn’t have cared if he had. Breathing was overrated anyway.

She sank down into the comfort and calm after the storm. She listened as his labored breaths slowed to something resembling normal. Satisfaction and bone-clenching fear rolled around inside her, confusing her brain and her body. How could she feel so content and so scared all at the same time?

Elle tried to banish the thoughts, not wanting to ruin whatever time she had with Zane on regrets and worry over something she couldn’t change. She had plenty of time to analyze and pick apart her decisions tomorrow. Tonight, she wanted to sink into his body and enjoy the warmth of the moment between them.

Zane was so still, the even expansion and contraction of his body lulling her into thinking that he’d fallen asleep. Until his quiet voice whispered against her ear. “I don’t know what this is. All I know is that I wanted to be there tonight, which is why I stayed away.”

His words both scared her further and sent a warm fuzzy feeling coursing through her veins. Or maybe that was just post-sex satisfaction.

The problem was, if he didn’t know what this was, how was she supposed to know? Oh, she had no doubt this was trouble, the schoolgirl flutter of her heart was enough to tell her that.

But she was so afraid that it was more. No one—no man—had ever made her feel this way. This vulnerable and excited and horny and scared. An addictive mixture that had apparently gone straight to her head.

The real question was, what would she do when it and he were gone?

10

AFTER ANOTHER AMAZING round, Zane had fallen asleep. Elle was exhausted, but she couldn’t seem to settle.

No, it was more than that. Her guilty conscience wouldn’t let her relax. Her imagination seemed to take the plain white key card still in the pocket of her crumpled capris and make it flashing neon. She’d been too scared to leave the thing in her room—even buried in a drawer—worried he’d come in and find it.

Why hadn’t he mentioned it by now?

This was the perfect opportunity, in the middle of the quiet night, to rid herself of the risk and the guilt. Picking up his arm, she unwrapped it from around her waist and placed it gently onto the bed. He made a deep sound in the back of his throat but didn’t wake.

Elle waited for several seconds, her nerves jangling the entire time, until he resettled. Then she quietly rose from the bed and, with stealthy fingers, reached into the pocket of her capris. The creak of floorboards beneath her feet as she crouched made her grimace, but she quickly found Zane’s jeans and slipped the card into his back pocket.

There, it was done. Standing up, she stared across at the man lying in her bed, the guilt not quite gone. Relief now mixed with it, though, so she’d take what she could get. The familiar jitter of spent adrenaline pumped through her body, making sleep impossible. Her fingers itched to hold a charcoal or brush so that her mind could zone out.

Instead of turning on a light, Elle opened the curtains that Zane had closed when he’d snuck into her room.

She realized that she should probably be upset with him for that bold move, but considering aftershocks of pleasure kept randomly shooting through her body, she really wasn’t angry he’d been waiting for her.

Elle grabbed her sketch pad and her box of charcoals before settling into the chair closest to the window. Moonlight poured into the room, washing across his body and gilding him with silvery shadows.

He was peaceful. The most peaceful she’d ever seen him. The harsh lines that dug into the middle of his forehead and bracketed his mouth had almost disappeared. Those lines weren’t from age—they were all stress. Stress and the burden of seeing too much, more than any one person should ever have to deal with. Her brothers, probably only a few years younger than Zane, carried the same badges of their job.

Again, she wondered what he was doing here, buried in the middle of nowhere. What was his story? What had happened? Because she’d been around the law-enforcement life long enough to realize that something had. Inexplicably, she wanted him to share that with her, whatever had put those lines on his face. She wanted to be his sounding board, to understand and share the burden.

Something she’d sworn she’d never do in a million years.

Her life had been the opposite of what it was supposed to be. Most cop families lived in fear that they’d get that call one day that their loved one had been killed in the line of duty. She hadn’t gotten that call. Instead, at five, she’d learned her mother was dying a slow and painful death. She’d watched her struggle with the ravages of cancer on her body.

She’d lost one parent and still had to live with the daily fear that she’d lose the other one.

She’d attended funerals for her father’s comrades, seen the tears and grief. And she’d promised herself she wouldn’t live each day in fear for another man in her life. After her father and brothers, she didn’t have any room on the list for someone else.