The Last Kiss Goodbye (39 page)

“You afraid of me, babe?” he asked. “’Cause you’re looking at me like you are.”

“Of course I’m not afraid of you,” she answered firmly, unsure if right at that moment it was strictly the truth. Dark energy rolled off him in waves. The look on his face, coupled with the rasping voice and the steely prison that his arms around her had become, made her heart beat faster. She could feel his strength, feel the power in the big body that held her, and knew that if he didn’t want to let her go, she wasn’t getting away.

“Maybe you should be.” He drew in air through his teeth, and Charlie got the impression that he was fighting for control. “That place—it does things to people. Bad things.”

His hold on her tightened until, if she had been afraid of him, she would have struggled. His body was taut with tension, and she could feel the aggression flowing through him. Her hands flattened and stilled on his broad back, but she didn’t let go of him. Didn’t want to let go of him, even though every instinct she possessed screamed
danger.
But no matter how menacing he might seem, this was Michael, and she was in his arms, and that by itself was enough to make her go weak at the knees. Instead of trying to pull away from him, she pressed closer still, letting him feel her softness, her femininity. Her breasts swelled against the unyielding wall of his chest; she could feel the delicious prickle as her nipples tightened. She settled her hips more intimately against his. As her breath caught and her body quickened at the rock hardness she found there she felt the long muscles of his back tense beneath her hands. She looked up then, and met the fierceness of his eyes, which were still only sky blue rims around a center of glittering black.

“I’m going to fuck you all night long,” he said, still in that harsh voice.

A shiver went through her as all around them the air turned to steam.

She had no chance to reply before his head dropped and he took her mouth, kissing her like he was a marauder and she was his captive, like he owned her, like she had no say. His hands, big and possessive, closed over her bottom, pulling her up on her toes, cradling her so closely against him that she could feel in graphic detail how aroused he was.

As he rocked her against him her body caught fire, just went up in flames.

“Michael.” She moaned his name into his mouth, kissing him back as fiercely as he kissed her, molding her lips to his, meeting the hot deep invasion of her mouth with a passion that matched his. She was shivery with lust, lightheaded, eager. As urgently as he needed to take, she needed to give. He kissed her ear, ran his mouth down the side of her neck, and she felt her bones dissolve.

“You’re mine, Doc,” he growled just as he had earlier, and even though part of her knew she should protest that women in general and she in particular were not something that could be owned, she was too turned on to do anything except cling to his broad shoulders for support as he bent her back across his hard-muscled arm. Then his mouth was on her breast, opening over her nipple so that she could feel the heat and wetness of it even through the cloth of her dress. Toes curling into the carpet, she arched her back and threaded her fingers into his hair. His hand went beneath her dress to stroke its way up over the smoothness of her bare thigh, then moved between her legs and caressed her through her silky panties, making her gasp, making her burn. Then he was kissing her again, his lips hard and hot and hungry, and his fingers slipped inside her panties to push into the hot, wet center of her so that she turned to liquid fire in his hands and moved with helpless pleasure for him.

“God, I’ve wanted you,” he said thickly, letting her go before she was ready, leaving her wanting more as he caught her dress and pulled it up and over her head. She was naked now except for her panties, and the air in the room felt cool on her overheated skin. Following his gaze, looking down at the pale globes of her own breasts with their dark, eager nipples, at the slender indention of her waist, at her flat stomach and long slim legs, Charlie felt a wave of desire so intense that she trembled. Her head spun; her pulse drummed in her ears. His eyes were all over her, burning in their intensity, and she felt her muscles liquefy beneath their heat.

“I’ve wanted you, too,” she confessed, and knew even as she said it that it was an understatement. She had ached for him. Burned for him. Still did.

She slid her panties down her legs, stepped out of them. Her heart was hitting about a thousand beats a minute. Her legs were unsteady. Deep inside, her body throbbed.

Watching, dark color suffused his face. He made an inarticulate sound. Then he yanked his shirt over his head, and she reached with shaking fingers for his belt buckle. She barely got it unfastened before he pulled her against him, kissing her with a fierceness that made her dizzy.

His hard-muscled arm curled beneath her bottom, and he lifted her off her feet like she weighed nothing at all, pushing her back against the door to the hall, spreading her thighs and positioning himself between them. Bending his head, he claimed each nipple with quick, succulent tugs of his mouth. Shivery with desire, she clung to him. His skin was hot and damp with sweat, and his broad shoulders were corded with tension. As his mouth found hers again, and she returned the kiss with wild abandon, Charlie felt the cool smooth wood of the door to the hall against her back. A wave of scalding heat washed over her even as she wrapped her legs around his waist. She felt his hand between them, heard the rasp of his zipper, and her pulse went haywire. Then he pushed himself inside her, huge and hot and urgent, making her cling to him, making her cry out.

“You like that,” he growled in her ear as he held himself buried deep. It wasn’t a question. He knew.

She told him anyway. “Yes.
Yes.
”

Kissing her, he thrust into her again and again with a ferocity that set her on fire. She could feel the door at her back, and the hard strength of his arms around her and his body pounding into her, and the combination made her spiral out of control. What they were doing felt so unbelievably good that she cried out over and over again. Her body burned and clenched and trembled. It was sex at its rawest, most carnal, most intense. The end, when it came, was explosive.

“Michael!”
Charlie gasped.. Then as he thrust inside her one last time and groaned she came so violently that her body convulsed in a quaking wave of heat.

A moment later, he kissed her again, deeply. As she kissed him back, she felt a shiver run through him, and opened her eyes. A subtle transformation in his face told her that whatever had been going on with him before, he was now at least near to something approaching his usual self. As if he could feel her eyes on him, he broke the kiss and lifted his head. His eyes opened, and she was relieved to see that, except for slightly enlarged pupils, they were once again their normal sky blue as he frowned—not glared—down at her.

“Did I scare you?” He sounded faintly penitent.

Charlie shook her head, still not sure whether or not she was telling the truth. Her heart was beating way too fast. “No.”

“It’s that damned place. It does things to me.” He stepped back to let her slide to her feet. “No matter what happens, I don’t ever want you following me into Spookville again, understand?”

“If that’s your version of pillow talk, you should probably know that it could use some work,” she responded tartly, telling herself that she had
not
been hoping for a hearts and flowers kind of speech from him but realizing even as she did so that, obviously, she had. She leaned back against the door, boneless and still a little shaky, watching him with secret, silent pleasure as he pulled up and refastened his jeans.

His mouth curved in the merest suggestion of a smile. His eyes slid over her, and the sudden hot gleam in them reminded her that she was naked. Her dress was somewhere on the floor. There it was, by his feet.

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Sexy as hell. Just what I always wanted.”

“That’s better.” She nodded toward her dress. Since he stood between her and it, asking him for it seemed the best option. “Could you please hand me my dress?”

“No.” He stepped closer, imprisoning her with his hands braced against the door, on either side of her as his big body rested on top of hers and he kissed her, a slow, hot sampling that made her heart start to pound again and her body quicken. “I meant what I said about Spookville: stay out.”

He gave her a hard look, and Charlie tried to concentrate on that, not his mouth, which next slid across her cheek to nuzzle her ear—or his hand, which found her breast. Or the heat of his bare chest against her breasts, or the abrasion of his jeans against her legs, and her stomach, and the most sensitive, responsive part of her.

Oh, God, can he really turn me on again this fast?

Focus on what he said. Before the part about Spookville.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean, no?”

“I like you naked.”

That made her heart skip a beat. If she’d really wanted her dress, she would have insisted, but the truth was that being naked in the moonlight with him made her go all quivery inside. Her hands, which had been pressed flat against the door, rose to press flat against his chest instead. Not that she was thinking about pushing him away or anything. No way.

She loved how his chest felt under her hands: warm and strong and satiny smooth ….

“About Spookville: I didn’t mean to go there, believe me. It just happened.” She sounded faintly breathless, and that would be because she found his powerfully muscled chest so sexy to touch. Plus, his mouth on the sensitive hollow below her ear was hot and wet. And his hand was big and warm. And arousing, as it cupped and caressed her breast. “Anyway, if I hadn’t followed you, that—that
thing—
would have gotten you.”

“Nah. I’ve gotten pretty good at getting away.”

He was kissing the side of her neck, his mouth crawling down the sensitive cord. His thumb brushed back and forth across her nipple. Lightning bolts of sensation shivered through her. Her knees went weak. Carrying on a conversation with him under the circumstances was growing increasingly difficult, but she persevered, because this was something she truly wanted to understand.

“I saw two yellow eyes looking at me through the fog,” she said. Remembering the horror of it made her shiver. He lifted his head to look at her, and her blood started to steam at the hot, dark gleam in his eyes.

“That was a hunter. They catch us poor unfortunate souls that wind up in there and drag us off to hell.”

Charlie’s heart gave an odd little hiccup when she thought about that in relation to him. “Really?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been caught by one. But I think it’s a good guess.”

“You know”—she was sounding way too breathless, and that would be because of his hand on her breast—“this would probably be a good time for you to tell me why something would want to drag you off to hell.”

Because any and all possible reasons that she could come up with made her go cold all over.

Michael shook his head, refusing to answer. He radiated a hard sexual tension, and Charlie shivered and quaked and burned in instinctive response. The truth was that she was weak with longing, hungry for him again, embarrassingly needy. His eyes flamed at her, and she remembered him saying that he could read her like a neon sign. Then he bent his head and kissed her again.

It was intended as a distraction, she knew. Charlie felt the insistent molding of his mouth to hers, felt him parting her lips, felt the hot slide of his tongue, and considered her situation. She thought about the black soullessness she had seen in his eyes, and the crimes he denied having committed, and what it might take to get a man sent to hell. And the conclusion she came to was that it didn’t matter: whatever he was or wasn’t, whatever he had or hadn’t done, she was now so ensnared in the web they had gotten caught in together, there was no breaking free.

She closed her eyes and slid her arms around his neck and kissed him back. His mouth was hot, and unhurried now, and so mind-blowingly expert that it made her wild all over again..

Still kissing her, he picked her up and carried her to bed.

His heavily muscled shoulders and arms looked silvery in the moonlight, she saw as he laid her down on the mattress and she opened her eyes. When he would have straightened away from her, she held him with her arms around his neck, and pressed her open mouth to his wide chest, kissing and licking the firm warm flesh. He shuddered against her, and she flicked a look up at him.

His eyes were hot and dark. “Let me take off my pants,” he said, his voice hoarse.

As he stood up and unfastened his jeans, she moved to the edge of the bed. Then she stood up, too, in front of him, and slid her hands down inside his shorts to close around him.

He was huge, and hot, and velvety soft and hard as steel at the same time.

She wasn’t a child; she knew what to do. As her hands tightened on him, did what she knew he’d like, he groaned. But that was all he could do, because he was busy pulling off his boots, and then shoving his jeans down his legs. By the time he got his clothes off, she was on her knees in front of him, her hands on his ass, pleasuring him with her mouth.